There’s A Rang-tan In My Bedroom

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When a little girl discovers a mischievous orangutan on the loose in her bedroom, she can’t understand why it keeps shouting OOO! at her shampoo and her chocolate. But when Rang-tan explains that there are humans running wild in her rainforest, burning down trees so they can grow palm oil to put in products, the little girl knows what she has to do: help save the orangutans!

Teaching Ideas and Resources:

English

• Make up your own version of this story, in which a different animal appears in your bedroom.
• Read the forward for this book by Emma Thompson. Could you write your own foreword for a different book?
• The story is told from the little girl’s point of view. Could you rewrite part of it in the third person.
• Make a collection of all of the rhyming words in the story.
• Write an acrostic poem based on the word ORANGUTAN.
• Think of some speech / thought bubbles for the characters in the illustrations.
• Write a newspaper article about a girl who finds an orangutan in her bedroom. What does she do to help the orangutan? Can you include some quotes from the people involved?
• Write a persuasive letter to companies that use palm oil.
• Watch the Christmas advert based on this story and try some of our related teaching ideas.

Science

• Write a report about orangutans.

Computing

• Use Scratch to make a game about an orangutan.
• Make a website, or record a video news report, that teaches people about the plight of the orangutans and what they can do to help.
• Use publishing software to make a poster about palm oil and how its use is affecting our world.

Design Technology

• Make a model of an orangutan and use it as part of a display to teach people about palm oil.

Art

• Draw two sets of pictures of the girl’s bedroom, before and after the orangutan arrived.
• Retell the story in the form of a comic strip.
• Draw or paint pictures of orangutans. Look at photos and videos of them for inspiration.

Geography

• Find the orangutans’ natural habitat on a map. How far away is it from where you live?
• Learn more about Greenpeace’s palm oil campaign and the impact of this advert in the video below. How can you get involved?