The kangaroo: a short text in English for kids, with questions

The text

Read it twice: once straight through while the children follow with a finger, once sentence by sentence with the picture.

• This is a kangaroo.
• Kangaroos live in Australia.
• A kangaroo is big and strong. It has a long tail and big back legs.
• Kangaroos do not walk. They jump! A kangaroo can jump very far.
• A kangaroo cannot walk backwards.
• Kangaroos eat grass and leaves. They do not eat meat.
• A mother kangaroo has a pocket on her tummy. The pocket is called a pouch.
• A baby kangaroo is called a joey. The joey lives in the pouch.
• Kangaroos live in groups. A group of kangaroos is called a mob.
• Kangaroos rest in the day. In the evening they eat.

Words to teach first

Six words carry the text. Show them with the picture before the first reading; the rest the children already know or can guess.

• kangaroo — the animal; stress the last part: kanga-ROO
• tail — show it on the picture
• back legs — the big ones it jumps with
• jump — act it out; the whole class, once
• pouch — the pocket on the mother's tummy
• joey — a baby kangaroo (and mob — a group of them)

Questions about the text

Ask in English, accept a one-word answer, then say the full sentence back. The answers are in brackets.

• Where do kangaroos live? (In Australia.)
• Can a kangaroo walk backwards? (No, it can't.)
• What do kangaroos eat? (Grass and leaves.)
• What is a baby kangaroo called? (A joey.)
• Where does the joey live? (In the pouch.)

Three things to do with it

• True or false. Say a sentence, the class shows thumbs up or down: "Kangaroos eat meat." (false) "A kangaroo has a long tail." (true) "A kangaroo can walk backwards." (false)
• Draw and label. A kangaroo with four labels: tail, back legs, pouch, joey. Spelling comes free with the drawing.
• My animal. A four-line frame the children fill with any animal: "This is a ___. It lives in ___. It eats ___. It can ___." Read the best three aloud.

What your pupils will get wrong, and why

Three slips come up in every classroom with this text, whatever the children's first language, and one or two depend on it. Russian and Arabic speakers drop "is" ("The kangaroo big"), because their languages have no verb "to be" in the present. Russian speakers also drop the article ("This is kangaroo"). Spanish speakers drop the subject ("Lives in Australia") and put the adjective after the noun ("a tail long"). Arabic speakers say "bouch" for pouch: there is no p in Arabic.

Fix all of them the same way: point at the gap, wait, let the child put the word in. A correction the child makes sticks; one you make does not.