Penguins Chicks

Penguin Chicks introduces young readers to the remarkable parenting behaviours of the yellow-eyed penguin, a unique seabird native to New Zealand. The narrative follows the male penguin as he searches for and brings food to his chicks, offering both scientific insight and emotional engagement. This non-repetitive text challenges readers to use a range of cues-semantic, visual, and structural-to decode meaning. The œch blend appears in key vocabulary such as œchicks and œcatch, reinforcing phonemic awareness. Learners encounter rich interest words like œpenguin and œgullet, which invite vocabulary expansion. The use of question marks and capitalisation of œH/h supports punctuation recognition and understanding sentence structure. A map on page 12 extends comprehension and encourages geographical awareness. Ideal for guided reading, Penguin Chicks encourages students to predict, question, and extract specific information for learning tasks.

Educational Benefits:

• Expands content-area vocabulary including science-specific terms.
• Supports comprehension using context and picture cues.
• Reinforces punctuation understanding through questions and capitalisation.
• Encourages discussion and comparison of animal behaviours.

Classroom Ideas:

• Use the pictorial map to explore New Zealand's geography.
• Write a œday in the life story from a penguin chick's perspective.
• Discuss other animals where males care for the young.
• Compare the lifecycle of penguins with another bird species.

Information:

• Ages: 5-7 years
• Pages: 12
• Reading Level: 6-8 (Yellow)