Trekking through the rainforest from the comfort of your classroom
Rainforests are the Earth’s oldest living ecosystems and can be a great topic to teach your students. But which books can you use to inspire your class? Gill Chambers, Senior Lecturer in Education shares her favourites.
I have always found that a rainforest topic really engages the class and when I last taught this topic the children and I turned part of the classroom into a rainforest (without the torrential downpours and live flora and fauna!).
Helen Cowcher’s vivid illustrations in Rain Forest (ISBN 0 552525537) is a great book to get the children hooked!
Complement this with Jeannie Baker’s Where the Forest Meets the Sea (ISBN 0 552525537). It’s an award winning picture book that depicts an area of North Queensland, Australia, in a series of collages. Use this book to inspire the poet in your children and get them to replicate Baker’s style by creating textured collages.
If you’re looking to explore themes of conservation and indigenous people there are three picture books I can recommend, all set in South America.
The Great Kapok Tree (ISBN 0152026142) and The Sharman’s Apprentice (ISBN 0152024867) by Lynne Cherry are well told and illustrated stories with a factual basis.
The Vanishing Rainforest (ISBN 0711221707) by Richard Platt (Author) and Rupert van Wyk (Illustrator) centres on the Yanomami tribe and deforestation.
If you’re looking for something a bit different try Eva Ibbotson’s Journey to the River Sea (ISBN 1447265688). It’s a tale of an orphaned teenager who has to relocate from England to Manaus, hundreds of miles up the Amazon.
I hope these suggestions provide some inspiration for your classes, but feel free to share your ideas with us too!
