Augustus and his Smile by Catherine Rayner, Little Tiger Press
Augustus the tiger believes he has lost his smile so he sets off to find it. His search takes him to ‘the tops of the tallest
trees’, over mountains and to the bottom of the ocean. When finally he finds it, he realises it was there all along. The
collage style illustrations are beautifully uncluttered and almost tactile.
Overall aims of this teaching sequence:
 To engage children with a story with which they will empathise
 To explore themes and issues, and develop and sustain ideas through discussion, enabling children to make
connections with their own lives
 To develop creative responses to the text through play, drama, music and movement, storytelling and artwork
 To compose a call and response poem
 To write in role in order to explore and develop empathy for a character
 To write with confidence for real purposes and audiences
 To write for meaning and purpose in a variety of non-narrative forms
 To know that information can be retrieved from a variety of sources
 To use talk to give explanations and opinions
 To use vocabulary influenced by books
 To enjoy an increasing range of books
 To compose and perform own poetry
This teaching sequence is designed for to support transition into Key Stage 1 and is well suited to Year 1. It could be
adapted to suit a Reception or Year 2 class.
Overview of this teaching sequence.
This core book list teaching sequence is intended to support children’s learning inspired by a high quality book.
The book supports teachers to teach about character development, emotional response to issues faced in a story and is a
fantastic text to support personal, social and emotional development; the pursuit of happiness. The story supports
children’s understanding of narrative structure and character viewpoint as well as offering plenty of opportunity for
learning in a range of purposeful, context-rich ways. As well as extending children’s learning through rich, play-based
provision, this book offers ideal conditions in which to develop and broaden children’s experiences of a range of other
text types, including non-fiction and poetry. There are numerous opportunities for children to work in cross-curricular
ways, enabling them to make meaningful connections, meeting the requirements of both EYFS 2014 and NC 2014.
Key Teaching Approaches:
Responding to illustration
Book Talk
Word collection
Visualising
Drama and role play
Shared writing
Role on the Wall
Storytelling
Writing in role
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.
Teaching Sessions
Prior to starting this teaching sequence:
 Gather a number of photographs, video clips, information books, posters and leaflets about tigers.
 Make a class journal in which to capture the talk and the activities that the class create around Augustus and tigers.
 Consider the possibility of using technology to record children’s ideas and findings in order to engage a wider
audience. This could be as simple as creating e-books or involving the children in the school’s website or virtual
learning platform, such as leading forum discussions or engaging the school community in animal conservation
projects or competitions. You might even consider creating a blog for the children to record their growing awareness
and ideas about endangered animals as well as sharing web links, practical activities and achievements.
 Put together a collection of stories that explore feelings and with which they can relate to their own lives, including
further titles by Catherine Rayner, such as Iris and Isaac and Abigail.
 Create a large class display that will act as a working wall upon which to demonstrate the children’s developing
knowledge and ideas around Augustus’s shifting feelings, their own happiness as well as what is being found out
about Siberian tigers, South Russia and China and endangered animals.
 This book has been chosen, in part, because of the quality of illustrations it contains and the ways in which the
illustrations work with the text to create meaning for the reader. Children will need time and opportunity to enjoy
and respond to the pictures and to talk together about what they contribute to their understanding of the text. As the
sessions unfold, there could be opportunities for children to develop their responses by drawing or painting in a
similar style to Catherine Rayner’s artwork. It would be well worth exploring ink and watercolour techniques with the
children.
Role on the Wall*
*Role on the wall is a technique that uses a displayed outline of the character to record feelings (inside the outline) and
outward appearances (outside the outline) at various stopping points across the story. Using a different colour at each of
the stopping points allows you to track changes in the character’s emotional journey.
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Look at an isolated illustration of the tiger without a smile on the first page without revealing the text or any
information about it.
Create a large scale version of the tiger for the children to see. What words or phrases can the children think of to
describe it? You could use key questions to prompt thinking, e.g. :
- Who is this?
- What can you say about the tiger?
- How does it feel? Why do you think that?
- What has happened?
- Does anything puzzle you? So you have any questions?
- Does this remind you of anything in real life or in stories?
Draw out the words and phrases that describe the tiger’s sadness, providing oral models for extending vocabulary
during the ensuing conversations and whilst recasting and clarifying children’s use of the word ‘sad’, e.g. glum,
miserable or gloomy. This is also an opportunity to model the use of adverbial phrases, e.g. staring sadly into space.
Model how our perceptions of the tiger’s thoughts and feelings are placed inside the Role on the Wall and
descriptions of its outward appearance are placed around the outside.
Provide small groups with the image on which to write around, annotating with thoughts about the tiger, as modelled
above.
This could lead into a more extended piece of character description, perhaps during focused group work, drawing on
children’s inferential understanding of the character and perhaps combining this with prior knowledge of tigers.
Respond to illustration and exploring possibilities, relating to personal experiences
 Reveal the font cover to introduce the book and Augustus to the children. Compare this illustration to the image of a
glum Augustus from the last session.
- How does Augustus feel now? How do you know? What can we say about him now that we can add to his
Role on the Wall.
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.
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Why do you think he feels differently here? What might have happened?
Has anything ever made you feel miserable when you were feeling fine before? What cheers you up when you
feel down in the dumps?
Lead this discussion with sensitivity, ensuring you are aware of your children’s emotional states and potential
difficulties that may arise for them in disclosing personal feelings. It would be worth considering having these
discussions led by adults with whom they are familiar, such as a Key Person from the Foundation Stage, or maintain
their Key Person groups so that they have a secure setting in which to talk about experiences that may be meaningful
to them.
Elicit the children’s predictions about the possible events that may have led to his resultant emotion. Do they think he
started out happy or sad? Encourage children to discuss and justify their ideas and respond to each other
appropriately and with respect. This may need modelling.
Provide the children with rolls of paper or tuff tray inserts upon which they can jot down their ideas, mapping out the
possible events leading up to his changing feelings. They might work in pairs or small groups and use annotated
drawings in which to record and develop their ideas together.
Pin up the children’s predicted story maps and compare their ideas about the story of Augustus.
Drama - response to illustration then freeze-frame and thought track* Augustus and the butterfly
*Freeze-frames are still images or a tableau. They can be used to enable groups of children to examine a key event or
situation from a story and decide in detail how it could be represented. When presenting the freeze-frame, a member of
the group could act as a commentator to talk through what is happening in their version of the scene, or individual
characters could be asked to speak their thoughts out loud.
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Revisit the image of Augustus on the front cover with the butterfly on his nose. Ask the children to imagine being
either the tiger or the butterfly. What might have happened just before this? What is going to happen next? What are
they saying to each other? What are they thinking? Elicit ideas and scribe them around a copy of the image in the
class reading journal about Augustus.
Ask pairs of children to take on the role of either Augustus or the little blue butterfly and act out what they think
happened immediately before this scene then “3-2-1-Freeze” the children.
With the children in freeze-frame, tap individuals on the shoulder and ask them to voice their character’s thoughts or
speech. Scribe in thought or speech bubbles.
Ask children to write their character’s thoughts in speech bubbles that they can create to fit their writing or in ones
you have prepared for them.
You might extend this by asking the children to rehearse the dialogue orally then create a play script. This would need
to be clearly modelled through shared writing and then in their pairings. Features of play scripts need to be examined
before children write independently, perhaps through group reading.
Read aloud and non-fiction research
 Read aloud the opening of the story, ‘Augustus the tiger was sad. He had lost his smile. So he did a HUGE tigery
stretch and set off to find it.’
 Pause here and ask the children to consider where he might go to find his smile.
- Where do tigers live? Who might he meet there? What do tigers like to do?
 Ask the children to share with each other what they already know about tigers and begin to add it to the ‘What we
know’ column of a large chart. Model and encourage questions about tigers, things the children would like to find out
about and continue to fill in the chart:
What we know...
They have stripes so they can hide in
the grass.
What we want to know...
What do they eat?
What we have found out...
Do tigers play?
They are dangerous.
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Small groups of children can work together to compare and establish what they already know about tigers and what
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.
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they would like to find out , filling in their own chart.
Discuss with the children how they might find answers to their questions about tigers. Make reference to the nonfiction book display on tigers, the class globe, as well as discussing opportunities to use computers to search the
internet and draw attention to storybooks about tigers. This would be a good opportunity to discuss with the children
which of these they think would give the most up to date as well as accurate information about tigers and why they
think that. It is essential that young children are guided in broadening their reading experience to include high quality
non-fiction texts and trusted, age-appropriate websites.
Draw attention to the last page of Augustus in which Catherine Rayner provides facts about Siberian tigers. Read it
aloud.
- Why is she adding some non-fiction when this is a story book?
- Has she answered some of our questions?
- Has she thrown up more questions? How has she presented these facts?
- How might we present our information about tigers so that we can encourage others to learn about them?
- Why is important that people learn about animals like tigers?
Add to the last column of the chart demonstrating what we have found out by reading the story book, Augustus.
This session can be the springboard for ongoing research on tigers, linked to a number of curriculum areas, such as
Science, Computing, and Art.
Non-fiction Research - shared*, group and independent reading and writing
*Shared writing is possibly the most important way a teacher can help all the children to experience what it’s like to be a
writer. Acting as a scribe, the teacher works with a group of children to create a text together. Teacher and children work
as active partners, talking together to share ideas while the teacher guides the children through all the descriptions that
writers need to make and helps them shape their thoughts on paper.
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Children can find answers to their questions or groups can be organised to conduct research on a particular aspect of
tigers, such as ‘habitat’ or ‘being endangered’, so that they can feed back to others.
Children can be guided in navigating the features of non-fiction texts effectively to find things out as well as those of
websites you introduce. Ensure you have vetted, rehearsed and checked all aspects of these websites as there can be
distressing images about tigers online as well as inaccurate information. You might like the children to watch CBBC
Newsround’s feature on Siberian tigers in the wild:
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/22831701
Small groups could be supported in drawing out key information and making notes whilst watching the film about the
tigers and in a discussion afterwards.
Model the features and organisation of a non-chronological report on tigers in shared writing, using the children’s
findings recorded on their charts.
Groups can record what they have found out on their charts and share their findings with each other in a variety of
ways, such as through drama in a radio or television news report or a written non-chronological report, class e-book,
or annotated illustrations.
Drafting, editing and publishing – bookmaking*
*publishing their work for an audience helps children to write more purposefully. Bookmaking provides a motivating
context within which children can bring together their developing understanding of what written language is like; making
written language meaningful as they construct their own texts. The decisions that all writers have to take and the
processes of redrafting, editing and punctuation can be demonstrated and discussed as teachers and children write
together in shared writing.
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You might ask children to write their own non-chronological reports about tigers. Pause at regular intervals,
encouraging children to re-read sections of their text to check it makes sense and make simple revisions. Support
them in doing this and ask children to work in pairs to read their finished draft to a partner.
The finished work could be neatly published in handmade booklets. They can be supported in examining published
non-fiction texts for ideas on layout, organisation, interest and attractiveness.
Children can display their non-fiction books in the reading area for their peers to read and re-read. You might create
an area of display in the school so that the conservation issues around saving the tiger can be understood by a wider
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.
audience.
Re-reading, reading aloud and book talk*
*discussion about books forms the foundations for working with texts. Children need frequent, regular and sustained
opportunities to talk together about the books they are reading as a whole class. The more experience they have of talking
together like this the better they get at making explicit the meanings that a text holds for them: a child quoted in Aidan
Chambers’ book ‘Tell Me: Children, Reading and Talk’ says “we don’t know what we think about a book until we’ve talked
about it.” This book talk is supportive to all readers and writers, but it is particularly effective for children who find literacy
difficult. It helps the class as a whole to reach shared understandings and move towards a more dispassionate debate of
ideas and issues. Throughout this teaching sequence, we offer suggestions for the sorts of questions that teachers and
children might use in discussion. These questions are shown in italics.
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Ask the children to consider what this storybook is going to tell them about tigers and about Augustus.
Read the book from beginning to end.
Remind the children of their predictions about how he might find his smile.
- What did you like about the book? Was there anything you disliked about it?
- Was there anything that puzzled you? Do you have any questions for or about either Augustus or tigers as a
whole?
- Did it remind you of anything else, in real life or in stories?
- How did Augustus find happiness? What makes him happy?
Scribe children’s ideas in the class journal. Children can create simple book recommendations to encourage other
children to read Augustus. They could be introduced to other books by Catherine Rayner which often explore
emotional aspects of our lives with which children might identify, such as falling out with friends, feeling lonely, etc.
- Are there similarities within her books? What do you like / dislike about them? How do her books make you
feel? What is she trying to do with her books? Would you recommend them to other children? Why? Why not?
- Ask the children to create a Catherine Rayner display alongside their recommendations. They could continue
to add titles of books that they encounter that they think similar in theme, content or artwork.
Exploring emotions and relating them to their own lives
 Revisit Augustus’s Role on the Wall and discuss what makes him happy. What did he realise about finding his smile?
What was it that made him happy in the end? Look at his facial expression in each of the illustrations more closely this
time, eliciting from the children the realisation that his smile is growing each place he visits and with each enjoyable
experience.
 Re-read the penultimate lines: ‘He realised that his smile would be there whenever he was happy.’ Until the end of the
book: ‘...and he jumped away, smiling.’
 Make a list of everything that made Augustus happy inside his Role on the Wall.
 Ask the children to share with each other what makes them happy. Discuss if anyone has similar things to another
person. Do these scenarios involve a specific place or person or type of activity. How does it make them feel before,
during and afterwards?
 Ask the children to go on to record what makes them happy in any way they wish, as a piece of artwork, or in writing,
as a sound recording, or dramatically. They can share these pieces of work with each other or the whole class. Parents
could be invited in to work on this with their child(ren) or it could be a lovely piece of Home Learning.
Re-reading and Performance Reading*
*Performance reading is a valuable way for children to work in a group to perform the text. Children can begin marking or
highlighting parts of the text, indicating the phrases or sections to be read by individuals or by several members of the
group. This enables them to bring out the meanings, pattern and characterisation.
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Re-read the book aloud to the children, modelling the rhythm of the refrain (‘...but he couldn’t find his smile.’) and the
intonation to emphasise the expressive vocabulary and onomatopoeic words.
Map out all the places that Augustus visited whilst searching for his smile.
Take one of the settings and enlarge it. Show the children how to prepare the text for performance by marking the
text in agreed ways, e.g. to denote pause for dramatic effect and the contrasting tempo and dynamics involved.
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.
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Assign some parts, including creative effects and have a go at performing, discussing the performance and model
making some revisions.
Rehearse performance reading this part of the book using the directions on the text.
Small groups of children can go on to marking their part of the story, ready for performance reading. There is no
dialogue in the book so some children may be responsible for special effects, others for narrating, others drawing
attention to certain kinds of words or the repetitive refrain. The children can decide if they will take turns to speak or
have moments when they all read in unison.
Groups perform to the whole group, consecutively so that the whole book is performed as a class with you opening
and rounding up.
Visualising*, artwork and annotating
*asking children to picture or to ‘visualise’ a character or place from a story is a way of encouraging them to move into a
fictional world. Children can be asked to picture the scene in their mind’s eye or ‘walk around it’ in their imagination. Once
they have done so, they can bring it to life by describing it in words or recreating it in drawing or painting.
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Revisit a particular place in the story in order to add further detail and description in later retellings, such as the
underwater swimming scene. Read the text and discuss what is happening deep in this ocean. Which words or
phrases do the children like and why? How did Augustus feel to be amongst the tiny, shiny fish?
Visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KCDfbRVNtg and watch the shoals of fish darting and swirling about.
Provide ink/water colours paint the underwater scene, asking the children to depict their impressions of swimming
with the shoals of these tiny, shiny, fish.
- How are the fish moving?
- How would it feel to be there?
- What can he hear?
- What does it look like?
The children can work individually or in collaboration.
Ask the children to annotate their picture with words or phrases.
Drama and movement leading to poetry
• Inspired by Rayner’s illustration and words, the film footage, their artwork and annotations, ask small groups of
children to create the shoals of tiny, shiny fish using movement and brightly coloured scarves or pieces of tin foil or
coloured cellophane. Play some evocative music to maximise the range of movement and audience response.
• Groups can perform their Augustus dances to the class and children can be encouraged to discuss and interpret each
of the performances, making links to choice of movement and their own experience of the fish.
• Provide each of the children with suitably coloured strips of paper and invite them to write a word or phrase they
think best describes the scene, the movement or the emotions it evokes in Augustus.
• As a group, ask the children to arrange the strips to create a poem, suggesting and responding to edits.
• Groups can read, rehearse and perform their poems to the class, discussing effective effects and expressive language
used.
• Children could go on to write individual free verse poetry, either about this scene or choosing another scene.
Re-reading, visualising and story boxes*
*story boxes create opportunities to revisit the themes and storylines of a particular story. Typically, they consist of a
shoebox containing a range of small toys and inspirational objects. The box itself can be turned into a setting for the story
using a variety of collage materials and with sides cut to fold down. However, the box is at its most effective when
something intriguing or unexpected is added. Children can use the box to story tell the next episode of a story or create
another story with a similar setting or characters.
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Re-read the story as a class.
Ask the children to imagine what it would be like to be a tiger creeping and padding through these places. What
would they see there? How would it feel? What would it sound like?
Visit Google Earth or watch a clip of a nature documentary, such as the BBC’s Planet Earth and provide opportunity
for the children to explore China and other countries where tigers can be found.
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.
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You could provide resources, such as shoe boxes and art materials for the children to create their own setting for
small world play and re-enactment using a small world toy for Augustus.
Provide opportunity for the children to re-enact parts or the entire story within their small world settings and create
stories of their own.
You could use this session to lead into further research using non-fiction books to support the writing of fact-files or
non-chronological reports about countries such as China.
Word collections*
*The making of word collections is a way of focusing on the language of a story or poem. Children could make collections
of words that describe a particular character’s feelings or they can collect words that describe a place or situation.
Collecting words in this way helps children to have a more focused awareness of the ways language affects our
perceptions and understandings of character and the ways in which the author creates the reader’s response.
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Following the performance reading and after subsequent revisits, the children could go on to create a collection of
words or phrases that they have enjoyed listening to or using themselves.
Discuss choices and the way in which they add detail and description to settings throughout Augustus’s quest to find
his smile.
Continue to add to the collections as new words and phrases are read, heard and incorporated in the children’s own
play or in conversations.
Storytelling and story mapping* – puppets, small world or role play
*making a story map is a way of retelling the story. It is a graphic means of breaking the story down into episodes and
sequencing events. This kind of graphic representation helps children to hold on to the shape of the story more confidently
so that they can retell it orally prior to writing. Children can also make story maps as a form of planning, to prepare for
their own writing.
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Revisit the children's reactions to the story, focusing on the aspects that they found most interesting or surprising.
Orally retell the story, encouraging children to contribute.
Remind the children that the main events are the principal things which happen in a story and they must be told in
the right order for the story to make sense.
Following the introduction to Augustus and his sadness, concentrate on sequencing the main events and places
visited in the search for his smile. Encourage the children to retell the story in stages, providing them with suitable
adverbials to support their retelling, starting with ‘First...’ followed by ‘Then...’, ‘Further and further...’’...until...’ etc.
Swiftly demonstrate how to map the story along a roll of backing paper to demonstrate the events. Label the story
map with the adverbial phrases used in the oral retelling.
In pairs, invite the children to draw a map of the story. Backing/wall paper that can be rolled out as they draw and
write is effective.
When completed, ask the children to retell the story using their story maps. Encourage the children to draw on their
word collections and repeated phrases in their retelling and other techniques a storyteller might use to entertain the
audience.
Alternatively, you could provide props to support the retelling, such as magnetic illustrations, small world or puppets.
Drama – freeze-frame key events
 Make a storytelling circle and ‘pass the story around’. Stop at important parts of the story and ask children to go into
the middle and create a freeze-frame of each scene.
 Tap children on the shoulder, paying particular attention to exploring shifting Augustus’s point of view as the story
unfolds.
Shared writing – composing questions for hot seating* Augustus
*in hot seating, somebody role-plays a key character from a poem or story and is interviewed by the rest. This activity
involves children in examining a character’s motivation closely. Before the hot seating, children need to discuss what they
want to know in order to identify questions and ideas that they want answering. If children have no experience of hot
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.
seating an adult will need to take the role.
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Revisit key events in the story, this time taking Augustus’s viewpoint. Throughout this walk through of the book, ask
the children to respond to and discuss prompts or questions such as:
- Why were you so sad at the start?
- What did the birdsong sound like? How did it make you feel? Why did you like it?
- How did the water feel on your nose?
Discuss possible answers and responses from Augustus’s point of view.
Tell the children that Augustus will be visiting them next session to tell us the story from his point of view so it would
be a good idea to have some questions prepared. Share writing a couple of questions, taking and extending
suggestions from the children and modelling the writing process explicitly.
Ask the children to think of questions that they have for Augustus, orally rehearse them with a response partner and
write them in preparation for Augustus’s visit.
Review the collection of questions as a class, discussing those that might elicit the deeper responses, rather than a
simple yes/no. Once more using shared writing to model the editing process, shifting closed questioning into open.
Exploring character through drama – hot seating* Augustus
*In hot-seating, one member of the class role-plays a central character from a poem or story and is interviewed by the
other children. This activity involves children closely examining a character's motivation and responses. Before the hotseating, they need to discuss what it is they want to know and identify questions they want answering. If children have no
experience of hot-seating, the teachers may initially need to take the role.
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A member of staff or older child can visit the class in the guise of Augustus, perhaps wearing orange and black
clothing or a simple costume / face paint.
Introduce ‘Augustus’ to the children and ask him to tell his story from his point of view. Provide illustrations of key
events as story prompts for Augustus to tell the story orally to the children.
Following the storytelling, ask one or two confident children to ask Augustus a question from the class collection.
Scribe Augustus’s responses on speech bubbles next to the questions. Encourage less confident speakers to
contribute to the hot seating, using questions they have rehearsed.
You could follow this up by asking the children to have a go at being hot seated as Augustus.
Shared writing in role – Augustus’s story
 Explain to the children that you think Augustus would like to tell his own story to help other people find their smile if
they are feeling sad.
 Use the story map with annotations to help you begin to rehearse orally your first person recount in role as Augustus.
Give the children opportunities to offer up ideas, for example predictable phrases, feelings, time connectives, a
closing sentence that says what happened in the end.
 Through paired talk, ask the children to retell the event orally from Augustus’s point of view.
 Through modelled and shared writing, compose a narrative recount using the annotated story maps and model how
to rehearse the sentences orally before writing.
Drafting, editing and publishing – bookmaking*
*publishing their work for an audience helps children to write more purposefully. Bookmaking provides a motivating
context within which children can bring together their developing understanding of what written language is like; making
written language meaningful as they construct their own texts. The decisions that all writers have to take and the
processes of redrafting, editing and punctuation can be demonstrated and discussed as teachers and children write
together in shared writing.
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Ask children to write their own Augustus stories. Pause at regular intervals, encouraging children to re-read sections
of their text to check it makes sense and make simple revisions. Support them in doing this and ask children to work
in pairs to read their finished draft to a partner.
The finished work could be neatly published in handmade booklets.
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.
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Children can read their narratives aloud to peers then, as a class, discuss how they compare to the original story.
Persuasive shared writing – Save the Tiger!
 Discuss what we have found out about tigers and in particular why they are endangered and what we might do to try
and save them. The children will need opportunity to work in depth together to find out more about tigers or other
endangered species and have it recorded clearly in a way that they can reference now.
 Look again at the very last page of Augustus, reading aloud the ‘Tigers are in danger’ section. Analyse the
effectiveness of this section in persuading people to help save the tigers. How can we present the same or similar
information in a way that makes people want to keep looking and to help? Elicit ideas from the children and jot them
down.
 Show the children a range of information posters relating to aspects of conservation or endangered animals. With the
children, discuss what makes the poster successful in conveying its message and being persuasive to the reader pulling out effective features and looking closely at how the information has been represented within the printed text
and imagery.
 Model how we might turn our research into an information poster. When you have thought through and created a
simple design for the poster and illustration, use shared writing to rehearse orally and write simple headlines,
sentences or captions for the poster. It might be helpful to provide the children with a framework on which to model
their own writing, perhaps asking the reader a question to draw them in.
 Ask pairs of children to make large posters using their group’s research. Ask the children to choose their art materials
carefully to make for a strong design impact.
 Evaluate successful features of the posters and make simple revisions where appropriate. Pin the posters up around
the school and in the locality to provoke thinking and discuss among the school and local community.
 As a class discuss what you wish to gain from putting the posters up around the school. How can you publicise them
further. Share writing a letter to the Headteacher asking him or her to devote an assembly on conservation for
endangered animals, using the story of Augustus as a starting point.
Other ideas for Continuous and Cross-curricular Provision:
PSED:
 Have a basket of special friend cuddly toys that children can access and take on adventures in the setting.
Reading Area:
 Provide soft toy tigers that recommend books as well as being there to listen to the children read to them.
 Create a display of other books by Catherine Rayner, such as: Abigail, Iris and Isaac, Posy and Sylvia and Bird. Provide
time for children to read them and share. Encourage them to make recommendations and find connections in her
themes and characters.
 Display a range of attractive and accurate information and story books about tigers and endangered animals, such as:
- The Journey Home by Frann Preston-Gannon
- Oi! Get off our Train by John Burningham
Mark making/ writing
 Making maps of the journey Augustus takes in the pursuit of happiness.
 Create a message centre where the children can write and post notes, cards and letters to Augustus or their own
friends and family to cheer them up and reassure them.
 Visit that may inspire the children’s own mark making.
Small world play:
 Create a small world of the area Siberian tigers inhabit: Eastern Russia's birch forests, China and North Korea.
Research these geographical locations and others around the world where different species of tigers can be found.
Perhaps create a range of small world setting and maps to compare and house the toy tigers.
 Make puppets of Augustus and the animals he meets to aid retellings.
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.
Role play and real life experiences:
 Children can help create and play in role play areas linked to Augustus, such as:
- A travel and tourism office
- A conservation park office
- A zoo /safari park
Water and Sensory Play
 Children can estimate numbers of shoals of fish immersed in water, catching handfuls of them, then counting them
out.
 Children can explore water in different states such as snow and ice and investigate how things can remain frozen, be
thawed more quickly or how small world figures or objects might be rescued from within ice blocks.
 Children can explore and recreate the crackling sounds created when ice meets warm air or hot water or when it
drips or splashes on a variety of surfaces. This could lead to composition of free verse poetry.
 Children can investigate materials suitable for swimming in, making links with the way animal skin and fur behaves
underwater or when wet.
Expressive arts and Design:
 Encourage children, by playing alongside them, to build stories around small world animals on journeys or in danger.
Encourage the children to record their adventures in self made books, on story maps or as graphic texts.
 Investigate and emulate the artwork of Catherine Rayner, her choice of materials and techniques such as painting and
silk screen. The children could visit her website for further insights: http://www.catherinerayner.co.uk/.
Rhyme and Song
 Sing action songs with the children such as ‘Down in the Jungle’ and ‘Walking through the Jungle’ as well as other
songs and poems involving tigers and other wild animals.
Technology and Computing
 In developing small world areas, writing setting descriptions and creating artwork, children can research the range of
habitats in these regions using a range of non-fiction books or use websites such as:
- http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/siberiantiger/?rptregcta=reg_free_np&rptregcampaign=2015012_invitation_ro_all#nojump.close
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/22831701
 Children could make audio or visual recordings of themselves reporting on and presenting their findings about tigers.
 Children could create stop frame or similar animations of a tiger or other creature/person on a journey to find
happiness.
 Children could film each other talking about what makes them happy, in school and at home.
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.