Lesson video

Hello, welcome to today's English lesson.

I'm so excited for today's lesson because we are going to learn all about one of my favourite animals, the tiger.

We're going to learn about some of their subspecies and some of their appearance features in preparation for writing a non-chronological reports about tigers.

I hope you're ready.

Let's get started.

In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or some lined paper, a pen or a pencil to write with, and a ruler.

If you haven't got a ruler, anything that you could use to draw a straight edge will be absolutely fine.

If you haven't got any of those items with you right now, pause the recording and go and get them.

So, in today's lesson, we are going to start with an introduction thinking about how we could find out more information about tigers in preparation for our non-chronological reports, we'll then going to do some research and note-taking, and then we'll end with your independent task.

How could we find out information about tigers for our non-chronological report? Are there any sources of information that you've used previously for research or to find out information? Pause the recording and try and remember, or write yourself some notes.

So I thought of three different places that we could find out more information about tigers.

We could read some non-fiction information text.

Some of those books that we've looked at previously would give us information about tigers, a little bit like the one on the screen, the National Geographic book about tigers that we've looked at before.

We could also look at some websites, and they're very much like non-fiction information texts except they're on a screen on the internet.

And lastly, we can learn a lot from video or film, and there are lots of really excellent wildlife documentaries that could give us more information about tigers.

By the end of today's lesson, you are going to have annotated an illustration of a tiger with some of their key appearance features.

So we're going to start our research today, learning a little bit about tiger subspecies.

So as I've mentioned previously, tigers are species of cat.

So they are a type of cat.

There are other types of cats, such as lions and cheetahs and panthers.

So tiger is one species of cat.

But then tigers can be broken down further into further categories called subspecies.

And there are six subspecies of tiger that we can find in the wild today.

Three of them you can see below, we've got the Bengal tiger, the Sumatran tiger, and the Siberian tiger, but there is also the Indo-Chinese tiger, the South Chinese tiger, and the Malayan tiger.

And they are all named after where they can be found.

So all tigers are found in the wild in the continent of Asia, but each tiger is named after the specific area or the country where it can be found.

And although these three tigers look very similar, that you can see on the screen, each subspecies of tiger vary slightly in their size, in their weight, in their colouring.

They might eat slightly different animals depending on the habitat they live in.

They might live in different environments, and they might live in different climates, so the weather or the temperature that they live in might vary.

Sadly, there used to be three more subspecies of tiger, but they have now all become extinct.

That means they no longer exist, not in the wild and not in captivity, and they never will exist again, which is really, really sad.

We're going to start our research by reading some texts from encyclopaedia Britannica, all about tigers and their subspecies.

I'm going to read along, and you're going to follow.

And then, you're going to have a chance to pause the recording and note down any of the key information from this text that you might want to include in your own non-chronological report.

Tiger, Panthera tigris, largest member of the cat family, rivalled only by the lion in strength and ferocity.

The tiger is endangered throughout its range, which stretches from the Russian Far East through parts of North Korea, China, India, and Southeast Asia to the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

The Siberian, or Amur tiger is the largest, measuring up to 4 metres, 13 feet in total length and weighing up to 300 kilogrammes, 660 pounds.

The Indian, or Bengal tiger, is the most numerous and accounts for about half of the total tiger population.

Tigers from the South are smaller than those of the north.

So I now want you to pause the recording, read through the text again, and write down in bullet points.

You don't need to write full sentences, some of the key information about tiger subspecies that you could use in your reports.

I went through the text and highlighted what I thought was some of the key information, the most important words and phrases that would help me to write about tiger subspecies in my own reports.

I then summarised that key information in a few bullet points.

That I'm going to read you below.

And then at the end, you're going to have a chance to pause the recording again and write down any of the bullet points that I've got that you haven't included.

So, first of all, we start with the Latin name or the scientific name for tiger, which is Panthera tigris.

And that'd be a really good word or phrase to include in your non-chronological report to make it sound very scientific and formal.

Tiger is the largest member of the cat family.

So of all the different species of cats that we've mentioned before, tigers are the biggest.

The Siberian tiger is the largest of all the six subspecies.

It measures 4 metres in length, and 300 kilogrammes in weight.

Tigers from the south are smaller than the north.

So all tigers are found in the continent of Asia, but those from the south generally are smaller than the north.

So the Siberian tiger can be found in the very North of Russia.

So that's much bigger than the Sumatran tiger, for example, which can be found in the Indonesian island of Sumatra in Southeast Asia.

Tigers are endangered.

So that means that they are at risk of becoming extinct because the number of them has reduced significantly over the years.

And they can also be found in Russia, North Korea, China, India, and Southeast Asia.

So all of those countries are part of the continent Asia.

The Indian or Bengal tiger can be called either name are the most numerous.

So out of all the subspecies of tiger, if you took all the tigers that are present in the world at the moment, around half of them, 50%, would be Indian or Bengal tigers, so if you want to pause the recording now and note down any of those bullet points that you haven't already gotten your own notes.

We're now going to move on to learning about the tiger's fur and colouring, and I'm sure you all recognise the colour of the tiger very, very easily.

Everyone knows that the tiger has that beautiful, deep orange-colored fur and those very distinctive black or dark vertical stripes.

And you can see in this image how well that colouring and those stripes help the tiger to camouflage or blend-in with their surroundings.

Also, you can see that the tiger isn't only orange.

It actually has quite a few patches of white.

If you look at the image which zooms in on the tiger's face.

You can see some white above its eyes, under its head.

Actually, it got some white on its belly as well.

And also you'll see in this picture, two white dots on the back of both its ears.

This means that when the tiger is facing away, and an animal approaches the tiger from behind, the animal thinks that the tiger is looking at it because they look a little bit like eyes and, therefore, will not approach the tiger.

So it's a really good way of the tiger defending itself from any anima that might want to cause harm.

We're going to read a piece of text again about the tigers' fur and colouring from encyclopaedia Britannica.

I'm going to read along, and you can follow on the screen, and then there'll be an opportunity for you to pause the recording and note down in bullet points any of the key information from this paragraph that you would like to use in your own reports.

The Indo-Chinese and Sumatran tigers are bright reddish tan, beautifully marked with dark, almost black, vertical stripes.

The underparts, the inner sides of the limbs, the cheeks, and a large spot over each eye are whitish.

The rare Siberian tiger has longer, softer, and paler fur.

White tigers, not all of them true albinos, have occurred from time to time, almost all of them in India.

Black tigers have been reported less frequently from the dense forest of Myanmar, Bangladesh, and eastern India.

The tiger has no mane, but in old males, the hair on the cheeks is rather long and spreading.

I would now like you to pause the recording, read through the text again, and note down any of the keywords or phrases that you would like to use in your report.

Remember, you don't need to write in full sentences.

You can just write in bullet points.

Pause the recording now.

I selected the following sections as the key information in this paragraph.

I then summarise that key information in those in the bullet points below.

So I'm going to read through the bullet points, and then there'll be a chance for you to pause the recording again and write down any of the bullet points that I've got, that you haven't gotten your own notes.

So we start with the Indo-Chinese, and Sumatran tiger are the bright-reddish tan with dark, vertical stripes.

Although all tigers have that very distinctive orange fur, some of the subspecies of tiger have a very deep orange or reddish-tan colour to them.

Tigers all have white underparts to their bellies, the backs of their limbs or the inner parts of their limbs, that means their legs and their cheeks and spots over their eyes are a whiter colour.

Siberian tigers have longer, softer, paler fur.

So like we mentioned before, the different subspecies of tiger vary slightly in their colouring and their fur, as well as their size and their weights.

There have been some white and black tigers found in the wild, but they're quite unusual.

And tigers don't have a mane.

They're not like a lion, they don't have a mane around their face, but the male tigers do have long hair on their cheeks.

Please now pause the recording and write down any of my bullet points which you would like to include in your own notes.

We are now going to learn about the tigers' paws and claws.

Have a look at the photographs on the screen.

Can you see the tigers' long claws? What do you think they might be used for? Hopefully, our research will help us to answer that question.

We're now going to read through another paragraph of information, about tigers paws, and claws.

I'm going to read, and you're going to follow along on the screen.

When I'm finished, you'll have a chance to pause the recording and write down any key information in your bullet pointed notes.

Tigers have large padded feet that enable them to silently stalk prey in the Asian jungles.

The claws of the tiger are up to 10 centimetres, four-inches in length, and are used to grasp and hold onto prey.

Each paw has four of these claws, and one specialised claw called a dewclaw.

Tiger claws are curved, which enables them to superiorly grasp and hold large prey and climb trees head-first.

However, the claws' curvature and the tiger's size and weight is a great hindrance in climbing down trees.

I now want you to pause the recording, scan through the text again, and write down any key information in your bullet-pointed notes.

Here's the key information that I selected when I went back through the paragraph.

I then summarise that key information in bullet points that you can see below.

I'm going to read those through to you.

And then there'll be a chance for you to pause the recording and note down any of the notes that you don't have in your own notes.

So the tiger has large padded feet.

So it has those dark pads on the underside of their paws.

If you've ever seen a cat before, very, very similar, but much, much bigger, and that helps them to silently stalk a prey.

If they had hard feet, it would be quite noisy when their feet hit the ground.

So their prey don't know when the tiger is approaching.

They have claws up to 10 centimetres long.

So if we think about 10 centimetres on a ruler, that's about how long a tiger's claw is.

They have four main claws, and then one special cloth called a dewclaw.

And their claws are curved.

They're not straight.

And this helps them to grasp and hold on to large prey and climb trees.

But the claws curvature and the tigers' size and weight are a hindrance to climbing down from trees.

That means it makes it quite difficult to climb down from trees, especially if they go head-first, 'cause the tiger is so big and so heavy.

It's difficult for its claws to hold its body weight onto the tree trunk.

So if you want to pause the recording now and write down any notes that I've included which you haven't got, please do that now.

We're now going to finish with your task.

Hopefully, you have got some excellent notes, all about tiger subspecies, their fur and colouring and their paws and claws.

Remember at the beginning of the lesson I said that you were going to annotate an image of a tiger.

So it's now that time.

So what I want you to do is take a clean piece of paper.

You can do it on lined paper or plained paper, it's totally up to you.

I want you to draw yourself an image of a tiger.

It doesn't matter if you're not the most amazing artist in the world.

You can just draw a very rough sketch.

And you can do it in pencil or if you want to use some coloured pencils, you can do.

I then want you to annotate around the outside of the tiger with key facts that you have learned about the tigers' appearance.

Annotate means to label.

So that's where your ruler comes in.

You're going to draw straight lines away from the tiger and write some notes about its appearance.

I'll show you an example now.

Here's the one that I completed earlier.

So you can see that I've added lots of notes around the outside of the tiger, and I've drawn my arrow to show what my note is describing.

So, for example, I've got large padded paws, and I've drawn an arrow to the paws.

I've written white fur on the inner side of limbs and underparts.

I've drawn an arrow to the tigers' underbelly.

So I want you to have a go at doing that now.

So you're going to sketch your tiger and then annotate or label around the outside with anything that you've learned about the tiger's appearance today.

This was the agenda for today's lesson.

So we had a short introduction where we thought about where we could find out information that we could include in our non-chronological reports about tigers.

We then did some research and note taking from different texts.

And you're now going to complete your independent task, labelling your illustration of a tiger.

Congratulations, you have completed your lesson today.

If you would like to please share your work with your parent or carer, well done on all of your hard work, and I will see you in your next lesson.