Old Tuatara

Old Tuatara tells the tale of a clever lizard who spends his day basking in the sun, cleverly fooling others into thinking he's asleep. With repetitive text and predictable structure, the book supports beginning readers through confidence-building patterns and strong picture-text match. The story includes direct speech, quotation marks, and consistent placement of text and illustrations, creating a comfortable reading experience for emergent learners. The high-frequency words œand, œin, œsaid, and œthe are used repeatedly, reinforcing sight word recognition. Phonemic awareness is supported with the repeated œs sound in œsat, œsun, and œsaid. This engaging text also offers a science connection through its focus on the tuatara, introducing young readers to a unique animal from the natural world. A great resource for combining literacy with early biology concepts.

Educational Benefits:

• Builds familiarity with repetitive sentence structure.
• Reinforces phonemic awareness of common sounds.
• Develops expression and fluency through dialogue.
• Introduces a unique reptile to support cross-curricular learning.

Classroom Ideas:

• Act out the story using dramatic play with a toy tuatara.
• Create an œOld Tuatara mask for retelling.
• Explore the habitat of the tuatara through a mini-research project.
• Highlight and practise the œs sound in a phonics activity.

Information:

• Ages: 4-6
• Reading Level: 1-2 (Magenta)
• Book dimensions: 16.5cm x 14.5cm; 8 pages