School Journal Story Library Activities: Frogs

Description

Add Paul Mason’s gripping School Journal Story Library text, “Frogs,” to your reading programme with this ready-to-use resource pack. Ideal for Year 7 and 8 students working at a Year 6 reading level, this unit blends deep comprehension with narrative writing and curriculum-aligned tasks.

In a stark post-apocalyptic wasteland, young scavenger Tane stumbles upon four living frogs hidden in a junkyard pool—species long thought extinct. When a hostile gang catches him, Tane refuses to give up their location, enduring interrogation to protect the fragile creatures.

What is included in the pack:

• Comprehensive Student Activity Sheet: A multi-skill follow-up covering comprehension monitoring, locating specific information, tracking vocabulary in context, summarising, and making evidence-based inferences.

• Apply Your Knowledge Links: Real-world connection tasks paired with web links and QR codes so ākonga can explore native conservation and species recovery.

• Creative Design Challenge: A hands-on, higher-order thinking task where students engineer a hidden sanctuary to keep Tane’s frogs safe.

• Writing Toolkit: Includes a Somebody–Wanted–But–So–Then graphic organiser, a writing-to-entertain narrative prompt, and three differentiated writing templates to scaffold drafting.

Everything is designed to connect directly to the refreshed New Zealand English Curriculum, saving you prep time while keeping your learners hooked from the first page.