Teacher’s notes
PENGUIN READERS
Teacher Support Programme
LEVEL 2
Jurassic Park III
Novelization by Scott Ciencin
Amanda are then pursued by angry dinosaurs and in their
attempt to get away, they are separated.
Chapter 8: Alan escapes from the Raptors by climbing a
tree. That’s when the Kirby’s son, Eric, appears. Eric takes
Alan to a hut and gives him some food. Alan tells Eric that
his parents are on the island looking for him.
Summary
It is eight years after Dr. Alan Grant was first introduced
to the live dinosaurs at Jurassic Park, where he was
almost killed. Now he works only with the bones of dead
dinosaurs. He studies their bones and writes books, but he
needs money to continue his work.
Chapter 1: Thirteen-year-old Eric Kirby is stranded on
the island of Isla Sorna after a parasailing accident. He
knows that the island is inhabited by dinosaurs.
Chapter 2: Paul Kirby and his wife, Amanda, offer Dr.
Grant and his assistant Billy, a lot of money to fly them
over Isla Sorna, an island near Costa Rica, and tell them
about dinosaurs. Dr. Grant accepts. He doesn’t like the
idea, but Billy says that if they take the money then they
can carry on their research.
Chapters 3–5: Alan and Billy, and the Kirbys along with
three other men (Nash, Cooper and Udesky) fly over Isla
Sorna in an airplane. As they reach the island, Alan learns
the Kirbys’ true intentions. They want to land on the
island in order to look for their son, Eric, who disappeared
with Amanda’s new boyfriend in a parasailing accident
two months earlier. Alan tells them that their son can’t
possibly still be alive as the island is very dangerous. They
are attacked and chased by enormous, angry dinosaurs.
Cooper and Nash are killed. The others decide to stay on
the island and try to find the Kirbys’ son.
Chapter 6: They soon find the parasail in the trees, but
there is no sign of Eric. Then they find some raptor eggs.
Alan is very afraid and tells everybody to run.
Chapter 7: They arrive at the InGen building. InGen
is the company that created Jurassic Park. They try the
phone, but it doesn’t work. Udesky. Alan, Paul, Billy, and
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Chapter 9: The next morning, Alan and Eric set off
towards the beach to find Eric’s parents. They come to
some open ground near a canyon where they hear the
sound of a phone ringing. Eric recognizes the sound – it
is his father’s phone. He shouts out for his parents and
they are reunited. But the sound of the phone is coming
from inside a fearsome dinosaur – the one that ate Nash!
The dinosaur attacks and they run to a nearby building.
They are reunited with Billy who tells them that Udesky
has been killed by raptors. Billy feels guilty because he
took two of the raptors’ eggs and this must have made the
raptors angry.
Chapters 10–13: Eric is captured by a pteranodon and
dropped into the canyon. Billy tries to save him and
succeeds, but he is caught by the dinosaurs in the process.
There’s nothing the others can do to save him and they
have to run for their lives. In the canyon, it seems they
have lost Paul as well when he falls into the river.
Chapters 14 –15: When Amanda fears that her husband
has been killed, she realizes that she still cares for him
very much. He manages to swim to safety and they are
reunited. Eric is happy to see his parents talking together
again.
The terror and excitement continues. With the help of
Paul’s phone, which they find in the dinosaur’s dung, Alan
manages to phone a friend who gets on to the United
States government who send airplanes, ships and a boat
to the island. Just after Amanda returns the eggs to the
mother dinosaur, they are rescued. As they board the boat,
they see that Billy has also been rescued and is still alive.
They are all very happy to leave Isla Sorna and return to
their quiet, happy lives.
Background and themes
The films
Steven Spielberg directed all three of these very successful
Jurassic Park movies, developed from Michael Crichton’s
bestseller. The character of Dr. Alan Grant, played by Sam
Neill, is based on Dr. Jack Horner, a paleontologist who
worked as a consultant on the first Jurassic Park movie.
Jurassic Park III - Teacher’s notes
of 3
Teacher’s notes
PENGUIN READERS
Teacher Support Programme
LEVEL 2
Jurassic Park III
In fact, the filming of the dig site in Jurassic Park III is
actually the site of Jack Horner’s excavation, where several
large Tyrannosaurs and some Hadrosaurs were uncovered.
They filmed on location in Hawaii, Los Angeles and
Orlando, Florida. Special effects were expensive and
amazing. They included the enormous spinosaurus, which
is the largest animatronic ever built. It weighed twelve
tons and hydraulics were used to operate it. The special
effects crew had to use 950 liters of oatmeal to simulate
spinosaurus dung. The audiences loved it!
Jurassic Park III continues the thrilling adventures of Dr.
Alan Grant, an expert on dinosaurs. In the first of these
movies (1993), he visits InGen’s bioengineering dinosaur
“theme park” on Isla Nublar and nearly gets killed when
the security system is disabled and the dinosaurs escape
from their cages. This was followed by The Lost World:
Jurassic Park (1997), when it is revealed that there is
another island (Site B) where dinosaurs were bred before
they were transported to Isla Nublar. There the dinosaurs
have lived, bred and flourished. In Jurassic Park III (2001)
Dr. Grant suspects that the raptors have evolved into a
species that can communicate and are now smarter than
primates.
Creating monsters
In some ways, Jurassic Park can be compared to the story
of Frankenstein, in that it is another story where man
creates a monster and then finds he cannot control his
creation. The horror is unleashed and the world becomes
a very dangerous place.
The fascination with dinosaurs
The idea that dinosaurs might one day return to earth
is both exciting and haunting. We only know of these
enormous creatures from studying their bones. But do we
really want to have first-hand experience of their strength,
power and emotions? In reality, dinosaurs were on the
earth long before humans appeared, and perhaps this goes
some way to explaining our fascination with them.
Ethics of cloning
Science may one day be able to reproduce creatures that
have died out. This would be of great interest to scientists
and to people generally, and could help us understand
more about animals and life itself. Cloning of animals
such as mice and sheep has already become a reality. Some
people consider cloning to be a wonderful thing, while
others think it an extremely dangerous enterprise. The
debate over the ethics of cloning has been raging for some
c Pearson Education Limited 2008
time. These movies leave the audience in little doubt as to
whether or not it is a good idea.
Discussion activities
Before reading
1 Discuss: Put the students in groups of three or four
and have them answer the following questions. You
may need to pre-teach the word “sequel” for the last
two questions. Have you seen any of the Jurassic Park
films? Do you like films about dinosaurs? Why/why not?
Can you think of any films that have had sequels? Make
a list. Look at your list of films with sequels. Can the
second or third film ever be as good as the first? After ten
or fifteen minutes, conduct a feedback session with
the whole class.
2 Pair work: Photocopy as many sets of pages 3, 8,
12, 15, 16 and 34 as you need. Cut off the captions.
Put the students into pairs and give each pair a set
of pictures and a set of captions. Ask the students to
match the pictures with the captions. When the first
pair has finished, ask them to read out the captions
and see if the rest of the group agrees.
Chapters 1–5
After reading
3 Role play: Write the following names on the board
Dr. Alan Grant, Billy Brennan, Paul Kirby, Amanda
Kirby. As a warm-up activity, tell the students to write
one short sentence about each of these characters
(e.g. Dr Alan Grant knows a lot about dinosaurs.).
After five minutes, conduct a brief feedback session
and then put the students into groups of four.
Allocate one of the four roles to each of the students
and have them imagine the conversation the four
characters have in the restaurant on page 5. Each
character must speak at least once. Give the students
ten minutes to prepare the conversation. Go around
the class as they work to help them with vocabulary
as necessary. When they have finished, get them to
act out the conversation in their groups. One or two
of the groups can perform their text in front of the
whole class.
4 Pair work: Write the following pairs of characters’
names on slips of paper (one pair of characters per
slip of paper) – Alan and Mr. Kirby, Amanda and
Ben Hildebrand, Paul and Ben, Eric and Paul. Put
the students into pairs and give one slip of paper to
each pair. Each student in the pair takes the role of
one of the characters on the slip of paper. Working
individually the students must think about how their
character feels about the character allocated to their
partner. After five minutes preparation time, the
students tell each other what they think. Call on some
of the pairs to present their ideas to the rest of the
class. At this stage, the activity could be turned into a
whole-class discussion.
Jurassic Park III - Teacher’s notes of 3
Teacher’s notes
PENGUIN READERS
Teacher Support Programme
LEVEL 2
Jurassic Park III
5 Debate: On page 5, we learn that “Alan’s work was
more important than a wife or children.” Is having a
good career more important than having a family?
Divide the class into two equally-sized groups. Tell
them that they are going to have a debate on the
above question. Write the following statement on the
board: This house believes that it is more important to
have a good career than to have a family. Regardless of
their personal views, allocate to one half of the class
the role of arguing in favor of the statement, and to
the other half, allocate the role of arguing against the
statement. Each student must write least one sentence
to support the position of their group. Then proceed
with the debate, by asking individual students to read
out their sentences. At the end of the debate have the
class vote on the question.
6 Role play: Put the students into groups of four and
ask them to act out the conversation between Alan,
Paul, Amanda and Billy which starts at the bottom
of page 10 when Alan asks them why they brought
him to Isla Sorna. Help the students with their
pronunciation and intonation. Give them enough
time to learn their lines and ask one or two of the
groups to perform the scene in front of the rest of the
class.
7 Discuss: Tell the students to re-read Amanda’s
explanation on page 12 of how her son became lost
in Jurassic Park. Then write the following question
on the board: Was Amanda right or wrong to let her son
go with Ben? Why/why not? Working individually, the
students write down their answers in one sentence.
Then put the students into groups of four and tell
them to exchange their views. Conduct a feedback
session with the whole class at the end.
Chapters 6 –10
8 Pair work: Write the following words on the board:
backpack, parasail, raptor eggs, InGen. Put the students
into pairs and tell them to discuss why these things
are important in the story. After a few minutes, create
new groups of four by putting two pairs together. The
students now compare their answers with those of the
other pair.
9 Discuss: Put the student into groups of three or four.
Tell them they have to give each of these chapters (i.e.
chapters 6–10) a different, better title. The new titles
can be statements, questions or simply phrases. Give
the students ten or fifteen minutes to prepare and
then call on each group to present its suggestions.
Write them up on the board. At the end of the
activity, conduct a vote for the best new title of each
chapter.
10 Role play: In pairs, students write out the dialog
between Alan and the Billy on pages 24–25 as if it
were a stage play. Then each pair performs the dialog
until they can do it without reading the text.
c Pearson Education Limited 2008
11 Guess: Put the students into pairs. Ask them to
imagine what is going to happen to Eric now he has
been caught by the pteranodon. Each pair should
note down their ideas so that they can read them out
to the whole class during the feedback session.
Chapters 11–15
12 Write: Divide the class into five equally-sized groups.
To each of the groups, allocate one of the following
characters: Alan, Amanda, Billy, Eric, Paul. Tell the
students to imagine that when they get home after
their adventures, each of the characters writes an entry
in their diary, telling the story of one or more of the
last five chapters from their own point of point of
view. Now divide each of the five groups into smaller
groups of two or three and have them write the diary
entry. When they have finished, call upon some of the
students to read out their texts to the whole class.
Extra activities
13 Research: Tell the students to use the Internet and/or
the library to find out as much as they can about the
dinosaurs mentioned in the story. You might like
to give the students a list of questions to help orient
their research: e.g. When did the tyrannosaurus rex live?
Where did it live? What did it eat? How big was it?
When was it discovered? When did it become extinct?
Where can you see a skeleton of a T. rex?
14 Role play: Put the students in pairs. Tell them to
imagine they are television journalists. They are going
to interview one of the characters in the story. Give
the pairs three minutes to decide which character
will they choose and why. Conduct a brief feedback
session, asking each pair to say who they are going to
interview. Then tell the students to prepare a list of a
maximum of eight questions they would like to ask.
After few minutes, ask the students to act out the
interview – with one member of each pair playing the
journalist and the other playing the chosen character.
Tell them to practice it a few times and then to switch
roles. Finally ask different pairs to perform their
interview in front of the whole class.
15 Write: For homework, the students write a short
review of the story. Their text should have the one of
the following titles: Why you should (or should not)
read Jurassic Park III. Tell them to include the
following points in their text: a brief summary of the
story; a brief description of the main characters; the
things they liked about the story; the things they
didn’t like about the story.
Vocabulary activities
For the Word List and vocabulary activities, go to
www.penguinreaders.com.
Jurassic Park III - Teacher’s notes of 3