~ Joyce Wei
English Teacher
~ Joyce Wei
English Teacher
Embedded Files
English Teacher
Do you have a pet at home? Are food and home enough to make your pet happy and healthy? To tell everyone how to make their pets happy and healthy, our grade 2 students made brochures to let you know how to take good care of your pets!
What Does it Take to Grow?
After reading the story How Animals Grow, kids learned that food and shelter are basic needs for animals to grow up, just like us. But at the same time, kids started thinking, “Do we only need food and a home to grow up?” This question led them to think about their parents, family members, friends, and teachers. They realized that they have received love and care from many others. That’s why they can be happy and healthy. Therefore, if they had a chance to take care of pets, they would also want to make their pets happy and healthy!
Learning from Experience
Besides providing food and a home, what else can they do for their pets? Together, they used background knowledge and research to brainstorm pets’ needs. Some kids have experience taking care of pets, so they shared their knowledge. Other kids have always wanted to have a pet, so they listened to the ideas from their experienced classmates. From the excitement in their eyes and smiles on their faces, teachers could tell that the students loved discussing this topic a lot!
Putting it All Together
With their brainstorming session complete, kids understood that pets need healthy food, a nice home, and they need to go to a vet if they are sick. But, what food is healthy food for each kind of pet? How do we know if pets are sick? With these questions in mind, kids were ready to move to the next stage: researching details. To make their information more complete, kids read library books and e-texts about animals’ needs. Some students also asked someone who has had experience taking care of pets before. With more complete details, classes discussed how to organize the details they found. Through the discussion, kids learned how to structure their writing so that readers could follow the information more clearly. They learned to write each pet’s needs and care tips in the same sections. Students also learned how to provide more explanation in easy-to-read paragraphs so readers can understand the pets’ needs more easily.
Student Motivation and Great Results
Everything was in place to write! It was time to make brochures to teach others how to take care of pets! To make brochures easier to read, kids learned to use large headings and illustrations. The final results are well-organized, clear, and easy to read. Through this Achieve Writing, students learned how authors wrote and organize detailed information in way that is easy for everyone to understand.
The last step was for students to present their work. You could tell how much they wanted to show others about taking care of pets from their well-made brochures with colorful illustrations. They were also proud to tell people how to make their pet healthy and happy. Do you want to have a pet? Do you want to make your pet happy and healthy? Read the selected work on the next page. You can learn a lot from them!
Take Good Care of A Pet
Cats
★ Anna Lai 賴芝軒 208
Do you want a fluffy cute pet? A cat may be a good choice!
Food
Foods that people eat, such as onions, chocolate, and grapes can harm your cat. Cats are meat eaters, so a high-protein diet is important. As your cat ages, its nutritional needs change. Kittens need more fat to be healthy. Adult cats eat lower-calorie food to avoid becoming overweight. Water is important, so you should clean their water bowl every day.
Home
Make your cat its own house and bed. Be sure to use materials without small pieces that could choke your cat. When you’ve finished, be sure to put soft pillows inside to keep it comfortable.
Play
Give your cat something to play with. You can get a table tennis ball or a empty paper toilet roll. A laser pointer mimics a flying bug. Be sure to let your cat win these games, a cat may lose interest if it never catches the fake prey.
Frogs
★ Justin Chueh 闕瑋呈 206
If your pet is a frog, read my brochure because it has all the facts about frogs.
Home
Buy a glassbox for the frog and use dirt to make a habitat. Add some water to the box, so the frog could lay eggs and swim. You could add some details to the box such as some mini lily pads, flowers, water plants, and some lights.
Temperature
If you are worried about what is the right temperature for a frog, here is the answer. During day time, the best temperature for a frog is between 45℉ and 85℉. At night time, the temperature should be above 68℉.
Food
Frogs eat insects and worms. You could buy some insects from the pet store. You can just place the insects in the box, so your frog can catch them on its own.
Beetles
★ Austin Sun 孫紹豐 208
Do you want to take care of a pet? Try beetles first. Beetles are small, and they are easy to take care of. If you don’t know what they need, read this brochure and then you will know.
Food for Beetles
If you want to give your beetle the best food, you can give them some beetle jelly, fish waste scraps, dry meat, and small amounts of water. But don’t give them chocolate, chips, candies, sweet treats or drinks. That kind of food will make them unhealthy!
When to go to the Vet?
You might need to take your beetles to the vet. First, you need to see if your beetles eat or not. If your beetles don’t eat, maybe they are sick. Second, if your beetles don’t do anything, they might be sick, too!
Best Home for Beetles
If you want to choose the best home for them, here’s how. First, you should have decor and a substrate inside its tank. Decor and substrate will let them exercise. Second, you need to put some fake grass and a wet paper towels.
Capybaras
★ Curry Fan 范誠希 201
I love Capybaras very much because they are chubby and cute. They are big and funny. But if you have a capybara as a pet, you need to know how to take care of it.
Very Good Food
Capybaras eat grass, plants, fruit, and tree bark. In one day, they need to eat three times. The first meal is in the morning, and the second time they eat in the lunch, and the third time, they eat in the afternoon.
Exercise is Good
They need to walk, play, jump, and also swim. They can go on land and in water. After they eat, they can go into the water up to five minutes.
Home and Sleep
They need a pond to sleep in. Do you know how capybaras sleep? They sleep in water with only their noses out. Capybaras need big space for their home because they are big.
Guinea Pigs
★ Eartha Cheung 張悅堯 205
If you read this brochure, you will know how to take care of a guinea pig.
Home
Your guinea pig needs a home. A wire cage with a solid bottom makes a good one. Get shredded paper or wood shavings for its bedding. You also need to clean your guinea pig’s cage weekly. You need to prepare a small box for it to sleep in.
Food
Feed your guinea pig twice a day. You need to feed your guinea pig some food pellets from the pet store. Guinea pigs need vitamin C in their food. They should eat it at the same time every day.
Care
Too much sunlight or cold air can make your guinea pig sick. If your guinea pig is sick, you need to bring it to a vet.
Fish
★ Alston Kuo 郭凡碩 201
Fish can be good pets. I chose this pet because fish are so colorful, cool, rare, and expensive. Rare fish are hard to find.
Home
You need to buy a big, clean, and roomy fish tank. You have to clean the tank three times a week. When you do, put a filter in the tank and remove any dirty stuff.
Care
Just like any pet, you have to take it to the vet twice a year for health check. Don’t spill coke or anything else in the tank.
Food
You can only feed the fish normal fish food! Don’t feed your fish expired fish food, human food, or sea food.
Page updated
Report abuse