Learning tasks

Order of activities for this read aloud:

Watch The Brilliant Deep Read-Aloud and read the story aloud. Connect to characters before, during and after reading. Explore the topic of coral reefs. 

Responding to the text. Review the story with your students, pause to discuss key points. What are the opening pages about? Where do the problems start? How do the words and pictures show the problem? As the story continues, how do the words and pictures work?  Is the ending positive? 

Comparing different types of texts (game, webpage text, story book text). Visit NASA ClimateKids page about coral bleaching. What do your students learn from playing the game? What do they learn from the information text? How does this information compare to the story book? Which one is better? Why? 

Creating a text. As your students to create their own character and tell a story about how they help coral and other sea creatures. Get them to create a diagram, poster or speech that helps show other people what the problem is and how to help. 

Who can use these? 

• Teachers can use this read aloud activity as it is or can modify it as necessary.
• Families might use these resources and links to do a read aloud activity with younger children. 
• Middle primary and junior secondary students might manage the read aloud and activities independently.
• Senior students might negotiate with their teacher to use these materials as prompts for their own complex, independent text productions and studies.