Find the Frog
by Judie Haynes
Teach students about how frogs use camouflage to hide from their enemies. At the same time, encourage your English language learners to interact in cooperative pairs. This activity can be used with students in grades 1-6.
Lesson Topic
How Animals Hide
Grade/Proficiency Level
Grades 1-2 advanced beginner to intermediate ESL; Grades 2-6 advanced beginning ESL
TESOL Goal and Standard
Goal 2, Standard 2 - To use English to achieve academically in all content areas: Students will be able to use English to obtain, process, contruct, and provide subject matter information in spoken and written form.
Goal 3, Standard 1 - To use English in socially and culturally appropriate ways: Students will use the appropriate language variety, register, and genre according to audience, purpose, and setting.
Content Concepts/Skills
How animals hide; observation; cooperation; spatial relationships
Materials
PDF our files Frog pattern; frog log page
Vocabulary
On, in, under, next to, behind, between, over, camouflage.
Instructional Sequence
- Photocopy 10 frogs (or one for each student in your ESL group) Use PDF files Frog Pattern. and Find the Frog Log. You can also have your students color and find butterflies, depending on your unit of study. Download Butterfly Pattern if you want to have students find butterflies.
- Ask students to look around the room and color a frog the same color as something in the room. Encourage students to color their frogs creatively. You want to end up with all different colors. Ask them to cut out the frogs they have colored.
- Before students come into class the next day, hide 6 -10 animals in places they can see without moving other objects. Animals can be out of reach but not out of sight.
- Review prepositions such as “on, in, under, behind, between, next to." Divide students into pairs. Pass out one log sheet per pair and explain the rules to students.
- Students must search quietly and not give away their answers to the other groups.
- Only one students per team may be out of their seats at any one time. At any given time one student searches and other takes notes.
- The searchers should go around the classroom looking for a camouflaged frog. When he/she finds one, it should not be touched. The searcher should then return to his/her partner and quietly explain the location of the animal.
- Together partners fill in the blanks on their log sheet describing the frog’ s location, and the notetaker writes it on the answer sheet. This description should include the color of the frog and the exact location. Example: The blue frog is in the flowers near the window.
- The notetaker then becomes the searcher, and the searcher becomes a notetaker. The roles should always be rotating, students taking turns, searching, writing, and correcting (equal participation).
- Have students review their logs. They should be able to tell where they found each frog.
Activity Downloads
Note: To view the classroom activities, you must have Acrobat Reader intalled. Acrobat is a free application available from Adobe Systems.
Butterfly outline (16k .PDF)
Find the Frog Log (2k .PDF)
Frog Pattern (53k .PDF)
Resource Picks
Biomes of the World
This website takes students into the different biomes of the world. Explore rainforest, temperate dediduous forests, tundras, grasslands and taigas. Investigate freshwater and marine ecosystems. This site makes a good addition to science units on these topics.
© 1998-2004 Judie Haynes, www.everythingESL.net
