Children can create non fiction sentences about some common African animals by cutting out the cards and laying them down in the correct order. Children can swap the cards in with another of the same colour to help them understand sentence structure and create repeated sentences. The word cards ‘have’, ‘can’ and ‘like’ have also been included to get children to think about what follows this. Initially, just give children ‘have’ and the yellow cards which would make sense after ‘have’ Once children become confident in creating, then reading aloud their sentences, they can move on to writing them down. Full stop cards have also been included.

Use these cards with children to get them making and orally rehearsing sentences before copying them and writing them down. These are great to use alongside Meerkat Mail by Emily Gravett. Make sentences using the sentence stems ‘Meerkats can…’, Meerkats have…’ and ‘Meerkats like…’

A non fiction reading comprehension based on the character ‘Sunny’ from Meerkat Mail. Children can practise learning how to extract key information in order to answer questions.