“Where’s Spot?” post-reading

In a previous article I gave ideas on how to make reading the book more fun and useful for language development, but as the book is quite an easy one to use the ideas for what to do after reading the book are perhaps more important.

Topical extensions

Daily routines

The book provides a good chance to introduce or revise “Go to bed/ sleep”, “Eat (my) dinner”, “Do the shopping” (with the basket), “Put on my clothes” (with the wardrobe) and maybe “Beat/ hoover the rug/ carpet”. You can continue with flashcards and TPR for other daily routines and/ or the song Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.

Feelings

The dogs are very obviously happy once the mother finds Spot and you can easily explain that she’s sad because she can’t find her baby earlier on. You could also mime “scared” when there is a scary animal. You can revise mimes for these feelings and then move onto other ones you can easily mime like “angry” and “cold”.

Furniture

Revise the furniture in the book with flashcards, classroom furniture and/ or plastic furniture from a dolls house. Introduce new furniture by giving hints about which one is coming next, e.g. “It’s big” “It’s in your living room” “Three people can sit on it” and “It’s soft” for “sofa”.

Animals

See below

Prepositions

Stick a small photocopy of Spot or another animal (maybe one that isn’t in the book but you want to revise) under a flap in the book, e.g. in the box, and get students to guess which page it is on. See below for more preposition ideas

Song-based extensions

• You can move straight on from the mother being happy to the song “If You’re Happy and You Know It (Clap Your Hands)”
• See above for Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush
• To revise and extend animals, you could do Old Macdonald Had a Farm, with students shouting out “No!” when you suggest an animal that could never be on a farm like a bear

Worksheet and craft extensions

• Get students to colour in photocopies of Spot or other animals from the book different colours from each other (just one colour for the whole animal), then maybe stick it to card, stick it on a paper cup, or sellotape it to a stick. They can then hide these around the room, balance them on their body, rush to put them in the right place quicker than their classmates or before the teacher counts down from ten, etc.
• Make a photocopiable version of the book on one A3 page but with the doors removed from the furniture, e.g. the front of the clock being an empty white space. You will probably need to make sure there is less furniture or smaller drawings to fit it on the page. The easiest task for students to do with this worksheet is for them to just colour in those spaces (“Colour under the bed blue”, “What colour word is written under the bed?” or “What colour shall we colour under the bed?”), or you can also revise animals by asking them to stick drawings in the places you say (or agree as a class), colour in the animal that is there (after identifying it, e.g. “What’s under the stairs?”) or draw the animals themselves. It is also possible for students to make a version with flaps as explained in Game-based Extensions below, but try to avoid bringing a paper cutter into class!
• Kind of the opposite of the idea above is to give them a worksheet with the animals already on it and have them draw or stick furniture to it to your instructions (“Can you see the bear on the worksheet? Good. The bear is under the bed. So, where do we stick the bed?”), another student’s instructions or what you decide as a class.
• A more puzzle-based worksheet is to have squiggly lines like pieces of string that connect numbers and positions on the page, e.g. “Where’s number 1?” (students quickly trace the line that starts at number one, maybe drawing over it with a crayon, to where it ends up) “Under the bed” “That’s right. Well done”
• Students make beanbags, e.g. from socks filled with lentils, and throw them or run to place them in the place the teacher calls out, e.g. “On the bookcase”

Game-based extensions

• Sellotape pictures of the furniture in the book and/ or other furniture (e.g. typical classroom furniture) to some boxes or plastic cups. Line those up at the front of the class or place them all around the room. Give students a plastic animal or an animal flashcard or ask them to use the ones they made in the craft stage. Shout out instructions about which box or cup they should put their animals in, on or under and maybe give points to those who get to the right one first.
• Put plastic animals or screwed up photocopies of small animal flashcards on, in or under boxes or cups with pictures of the furniture sellotaped to them like those described above. Mix up the cups (like the street corner betting game) and maybe move the animals from one cup to another and then ask “Where’s the (bear)?” or “What is (under the rug)?”
• You can make posters that have flaps just like the book and use them to play a hiding game like the one described in Prepositions above. Copy the furniture from the book by photocopying the pages and cutting off the dog (this usually leaves a clean version of the furniture but occasionally the nose of the dog is left behind and can be just left or Tippexed out). Using scissors or a paper cutter, cut around three sides of the door of each photocopy so that it can be opened without disattaching from the rest of the photocopy. Put the cut photocopies on pieces of card and stick all the parts but the door to it so that the flap can be opened. You will need two or three pieces of A3 card to fit all the furniture if you have photocopied without changing the size. Use Blu Tack to keep the flap closed whilst allowing them to be easily opened. You can then hide a photocopy of an animal under one of the flaps for students to guess where it is (probably making them turn their chairs around and/ or shut their eyes as you hide it).
• Place animal flashcards or plastic animals around the classroom and get students to shout out where each one is or say which animal is in the position you describe whilst pointing at or running and touching the right one. The same thing can be done with “Where’s the red Spot/ baby dog? Good. What colour Spot/ baby dog is in the box?” This can be made more challenging and fun by turning the flashcards around so that students have to remember where each one is rather than just look round and find them.
• A similar game that can be played without needing to run round the room is to take one piece of furniture, e.g. a box or a doll’s house sofa, and place small flashcard face down on, in or next to that piece of furniture. Maybe after mixing them up, ask students what flashcard is in each position or where each flashcard is.
• You can also play Kim’s Game in a similar way by putting the flashcards in those positions face up, hiding the whole thing with a towel or barrier, moving one or more flashcard, then asking them to tell you the changes (e.g. “The elephant is under the box!”) when you reveal it. The same thing can be done with several pieces of plastic furniture or classroom objects like staplers or glue sticks
• Another game that can be played with plastic furniture is to challenge them to stack them up together, e.g. “Put the desk on the chair and the blanket in the desk’s drawer”. They can then challenge each other or you in the same way.

Flashcard revealer extensions

There are several Flashcard Revealers (contraptions that reveal a flashcard section by section to make it more difficult and interesting to guess what it is) that you can make to tie in with the language in Where’s Spot. The easiest is just to make a large photocopy with several pieces of furniture on it and cut the doors on three sides so that they can be opened as flaps. Students use the same language as in the book (e.g. “Under the bed”) to say which flap they want opened next to try and guess the flashcard that has been placed under/ behind it. A slightly more complex version would have several flaps for each item of furniture (with one or more pieces of furniture on each Flashcard Revealer), e.g. “On the bed” (a flap in the space above the bed), “In the bed” (a flap of the top sheet) and “Under the bed” (the same as in the book).

Miscellaneous extensions

Get students to act out the story, with different students being different animals and maybe pieces of furniture