Reading A2: The Boys Who Found a T. Rex

Objective & content

An A2 reading about a real find. In July 2022, three boys, Liam, Jessin and Kaiden, were hiking with their dad in the badlands of North Dakota when they saw a big bone sticking out of the ground. Their dad sent a photo to an old friend, a dinosaur scientist at a museum in Denver, and the scientist and Jessin found a jaw and big teeth: it was a young Tyrannosaurus rex, 13 to 15 years old, now called "Teen Rex". A helicopter carried the bones away, and today visitors can watch scientists cleaning them. The text ends with a smile: next time you go for a walk, look down. By the end, pupils can follow a short true story, find facts in a text, and ask and answer questions about past events. It is part of the Reading A2 set: one-text readings with the same layout.

Pedagogical guide

The sheet has one text of about 260 words at A2, with short sentences of 13 words or fewer, and a word box with six words explained in English (hike, fossil, stick out, jaw, volunteer, rare). The ten questions go from finding information to giving an opinion: three choices, true or false and one gap to complete first, then "How do you think the boys felt when they found the dinosaur? Why?" and "Would you like to look for fossils? Why or why not?" The story is told in the past simple, with many irregular verbs (saw, took, sent, found, dug). The speaking task turns it into questions: in pairs, a reporter interviews one of the boys with "Where were you when ...?", "What did you do next?" and "How did you feel?". Every fact comes from news reports of the find.

Suggested procedure

1. (5 min) Warm-up: show the photos and ask "What can you find in a place like this?"
2. (10 min) Pupils read the text alone. They can use the word box.
3. (10 min) Pupils answer questions 1 to 10, then check in pairs. Correct together with the key; for 9 and 10, take two or three answers.
4. (10 to 15 min) Speaking task: in pairs, one pupil is a reporter and the other is Liam, Jessin or Kaiden. The reporter prepares four questions about the day of the find; then they act out the interview for the class.

Adaptations

[S] Go through the word box first, with the photos. Before the speaking task, write the three question frames on the board and practise them together. Pupils can answer questions 1 to 8 only, and ask two questions in the interview.

[A] Pupils write the interview as a short newspaper article, "Boys find a T. rex", with a title and two quotes. They can also find out about another famous fossil found by a child.

Materials & prerequisites

The sheet in colour or low ink (the low-ink version has no pictures), one copy per pupil: pages 1 and 2 are for pupils, page 3 is the answer key. A screen to show the photos for the warm-up. Pupils should know the past simple, regular and irregular, and past simple questions with "did".