Oxford Dolphin Readers
Level Four
The Tough Task
Craig Wright
Illustrated by Sarah Kuo
DESCRIPTION
A grandfather tells his grandchildren the story of a boy who had to do a tough
task. The boy was not good at English, and got bad marks. The boy was
unhappy, so his grandfather told him to bring back three hairs from a tiger. After
some time the boy got the three hairs and learned to be patient. Being patient
helped him to be a better student.
CROSS CURRICULAR
History: Stories from other countries.
Other areas: Study habits.
VALUES
Patience: Students learn that being patient has good consequences.
Respect: Children enjoy listening to a story told by a grandfather and learning
its message.
1
Level Four
LANGUAGE
Vocabulary: always, bring, cards, cave, feed, fire, food, grandchildren,
Grandpa, hair, kill, improve, loudly, marks, mountain, must, never, roar,
sometimes, thorn, tiger, usually, water.
Structures: can, have to, future simple (going to), past simple, present continuous,
present simple.
Expressions: All right!, little by little, step by step.
Lesson Plan
BEFORE
1 Review the members of the family quickly, with a diagram on the board, paying special attention
to ‘grandfather‘ and ‘grandchildren‘. Use flashcards or draw a family tree, eliciting the words from
the children.
2 Write ‘TIGER‘ in the middle of the board. Ask the children ‘What do you know about tigers?‘ ‘What
do they look like/ eat?‘ ‘Where do they live?‘ ‘What sound do they make?’ etc. Make notes with the
children’s answers around the word ‘Tigers‘.
3 Tell the students ‘We are going to read a story about a grandfather and a boy. The boy has to do a
difficult job for his grandfather.‘ Show the cover of the book. Say ‘The boy has to do something with
a tiger. What can the boy do?‘ Elicit predictions from the students.
DURING
1 Give out the books to the students. Show them the title. Say ‘this story is called The Tough Task.
A tough task is a difficult job.’ Ask if any of the children have to do difficult jobs for their families.
2 Tell the students to read the story silently, trying to find out: ‘What did the boy have to do for his
grandfather?‘ ‘Why did he have to do it?‘ Write these questions on the board.
Allow the students to read on their own, going around to check for difficulties. Fast finishers can work
on page 17 or page 20.
3 When everyone has finished, ask the students the questions from step 2 again, eliciting answers.
4 Read the story out loud as students follow along, stopping to ask questions like, ‘What is a tough task?
How can we say that in another way in English? Why was the boy unhappy? Where did the tiger live?
How did the boy feel about the tiger? How did the tiger change on the days the boy went to feed him?
How did the tough task help the boy? How did the boy change?‘
AFTER
1 Allow students time to read the story together in pairs or in small groups on days they work on the
exercises. Or, have them read the parts with dialogue in pairs (pages 4-6, 14 and 15) to work on oral
expression.
2 Page 18: Draw a chart like this on the board.
Do you…
do your homework?
listen in class?
try to speak in English?
Never
Sometimes
Usually
Always
Get the students to copy the chart, eliciting other verbs about school they can include. Tell them they are
going to ask some other students questions to find out if they are good students. When they have finished
the chart, tell them to ask four people the questions and to write their name in the corresponding box.
When the charts are finished, students can write sentences like ‘Miguel always listens in class‘ in their
notebooks. They can do this activity before or after doing page 18.
3 Page 20: Match the pictures and the words, circling all of the verbs. Ask questions like ‘Why can’t we
say, The boy run away?’ to recall how verbs change in the past tense.
4 Page 21 and 19: Have four students come to the front of the class, and tell them to choose a place to
stand. Get the other students to describe where they are, for example, Lidia is next to the door. Ask two
students to leave the room, while the four students standing change places. When the two students who left
return to class, say ‘Now Lidia is in front of the window. Where was she before?‘ The student must use was
or were to answer in a full sentence. Repeat with four different students if necessary. In the book, do page
21 first, as students can see the past tense verbs before writing them on page 19. Tell students to circle the
verbs on page 21, asking ‘How do we know when to say was and when to say were?‘
5 Page 22: If necessary students can do this in pairs to have two books.
6 Page 23: Students try to choose the correct word without looking in the story. They can check their work or
a partner’s work by looking in the text.
7 Page 24: Write some questions on the board in the past tense like ‘Did you have homework yesterday?’
‘Were your friends in school last night?’ Elicit answers, drawing students’ attention to the question words:
‘did’, ‘was’, ‘were’. Remind students to use these words in the answers. Do numbers 1 and 2 on page 24
together before students complete the page.
EXTRA PROJECT IDEA
Cinquain poem
Write a cinquain poem about a tiger as a class. Look at this one together:
Tiger
striped, wild
jumping, eating, roaring
very big and hungry
cat
A cinquain has five lines. Elicit information from the students about how many words to put in each line.
Rules:
Line 1: one word (animal)
Line 2: two words (adjectives) that describe the animal
Line 3: three words (action verbs ending with “-ing”) that the animal can do
Line 4: four or five words or a sentence that describe the animal or tell about the animal
Line 5: one word that tells about the animal
With the class, write another cinquain poem about a tiger or another animal, which they can copy and
illustrate. Or pairs of students can choose other animals to write their poems about.
Kids can use this link to find out about other wild animals that interest them:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/coloring/
For more information about tigers, see these links:
Bengal tiger: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/mammals/tiger/Bengaltigerprintout.shtml
Siberian tiger: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/mammals/tiger/Tigertocolor.shtml
Information, video and sound clips here:
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/animals/creaturefeature/tiger/