The Enormous Crocodile

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The Enormous Crocodile is a horrid greedy grumptious brute who loves to guzzle up little boys and girls. But the other animals have had enough of his cunning tricks, so they scheme to get the better of this foul fiend, once and for all!

Teaching Ideas and Resources:

English

• Choose an adjective and an animal and use these as a title for your own story, e.g. The Nervous Elephant, the Terrifying Tortoise. Use our word mat and labels to find appropriate adjectives / animals (see Resources below).
• Think of synonyms / antonyms for the word ‘Enormous’. How might the story have been different if the title had used one of your antonyms, e.g. the Tiny Crocodile?
• Use the speech on the first few pages to make a play version of the story. Could you perform this for an audience?
• The crocodiles use words like ‘tough’, ‘chewy’, ‘nasty’, ‘bitter’, ‘juicy’ and ‘yummy’ to describe how children taste. Can you think of other words to describe different tastes?
• Make a list of the adjectives that the other animals use to describe the Enormous Crocodile.
• Can you find any similes in the story?
• Write a news report about the events of the story, featuring interviews with the children and animals.
• Plan a new trick that the Enormous Crocodile could use to catch some children. Could you write a new page for the book that includes this trick? How might it be defeated by one of the other animals?
• Make some warning posters to encourage people to look out for a nasty crocodile who is trying to eat small children!
• Can you find any examples of onomatopoeia in the story?
• Listen to some of these audio versions of the story. Which is your favourite? Could you record your own?

Maths

• Find out how long a crocodile is. How long might the Enormous Crocodile have been? Could you measure this distance?

Science

• Do some research to find out more about crocodiles and where they live. Could you make a report about them?
• What forces are taking place when Trunky spins the Crocodile around and sends him flying up into the air?

Computing

• Make an animated version of the story.
• Retell the story using multimedia software (e.g. Powerpoint) with pictures, text, sound and animation. Watch this example:

Design Technology

• Could you make a model of one of the rides at the fair?
• Make a crocodile that has a snapping jaw by using a split pin to fix the moving jaw pieces together.
• Make a pop-up page with a snapping crocodile’s mouth.
• Make a puppet of the enormous crocodile and use this to perform part of the story.

Art

• Look at photographs of crocodiles and use these to draw your own pictures of them(see Resources below).
• How has the illustrator shown motion when the Enormous Crocodile is swung around and around? Could you use some of these techniques to create your own pictures of moving objects?

Music

• Compose a tune to accompany some of the crocodile’s nasty rhymes.

Geography

• Find out where Africa is on a map. How far is it from where you live?
• Look on Google Earth or another mapping tool to try and find the ‘biggest brownest muddiest river in Africa’.

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