Fish Out of Water

Nonfiction text features

Animals

amphibious, fins

Whole Group

• From the Storyworks archive: “Picture This!: Rainbow Squirrel” (September 2022); “Picture This!: Grandma Shark” (December 2022, January 2023); “Picture This!: Do You Think I’m Creepy?” (October/ November 2023)
• Suggested books: Merton the Mudskipper by Sally Hopgood & Tracey Tucker; Pink is for Blobfish by Jess Keating

• Video: What Is a Fish? (7 minutes) Build background knowledge about fish.
• Video: Mudskippers (7 minutes) Build background knowledge about mudskippers.

• Tell children to take a close look at the photo of the mudskippers. What they notice about it?
• Remind children that labels point to part of the picture and tell us more about it. Have children find the labels and follow the arrows with their fingers. Read the labels together.
• Read the mini article for more facts.
• Finally, discuss what children learned about mudskippers from both the picture and the words in the article. What can they recall? What was most surprising?

• Skills: Vocabulary, labeling (15 minutes)

Skills: Opinion Writing (15 minutes)

• Pose the following question to students: Would you want to be a mudskipper? Have students use a sentence starter below to answer the question. Encourage students to provide three reasons that support their opinion.
  • Yes, I would want to be a mudskipper because  . . . 
  • No, I would not want to be a mudskipper because  . . .