Natural history museum 2: primates
By Jo Bertrand

Introduction
To follow on from the previous Natural History Museum tip about dinosaurs I have decided to dedicate this primary tip mainly to primates but too other animals as well. In the monkey section of the museum children can identify where chimpanzees’ eyes are and do balancing experiments with a blindfold and a beanbag. They have to see if they can swing from trees with only one eye. I’m not suggesting you get your learners swinging from the chandeliers in your classroom but I’ve found lots of fun monkey-related and other animal-related activities that you can do with them in class.

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Aims

• To teach them how to write a postcard in English and what formulae they need such as ‘Dear’ and ‘love from’.
• To integrate cross-curricular activities related to finding out about animals such as howler monkeys and snakes.
• To teach them a traditional song. (Five Little Monkeys)
• To work on memory skills. (The Chimp Challenge)
• To teach the chimp-related vocabulary and vocabulary associated with games : Attack, Defend, Give, Hide, Nut, Groom, Share, Remember, Correct, Wrong.

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Research
Before you start teaching about primates and other animals you may want to do a little research yourself! Here is some background information for you that is actually written for English speaking children.  

http://www.kidport.com/

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British Council

• On the British Council teaching English website there is a whole lesson plan on how to use the story Miko the Monkey in class. You can download the whole lesson plan, the worksheets and the story itself at this link:
  http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/
• You can also use some extra interactive activities related to Miko the Monkey such as a quiz, and you can get your learners to read the story on-line (this could be especially useful if you have an Interactive White Board in your classroom).
  http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids

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National Geographic

• There is a wide range of factual information available on this website. There are some fun pictures where learners have to fill-in the speech bubbles and say what the chimp is thinking. http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/
• This following activity is much more politically correct as it follows the same format as before but with cartoons of penguins so no animals were dressed up in silly costumes here. http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/
• If you want to get your teeth into something then use this link to find out about snakes. There are some amazing videos including one about a snake who pretends his tail is a head to ward off predators. However, the commentary is far too advanced so you could make up your own few sentences to describe the snake as the children watch without the sound. You could lead onto body parts of animals and bring the subject back to monkeys. It’s obviously easier to develop body parts with a monkey rather than a snake! Why not get the students to draw a picture of a monkey and then cut up their picture. They could then rearrange the body parts into a Picasso style picture and label the body parts on their new positions.
  http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Videos/
• You could also play pin (or rather stick – it’s much safer!) the tail on the monkey. One person could be blindfolded and their team members could give them directions i.e. higher lower, to the right, to the left. You could have two pictures of monkeys for two different teams and they get a point for being the closest. You could then do the same but with other body parts such as ‘stick the leg’ or ‘stick the head’.
• For more videos go to National Geographic and find out about the howler monkey. There are facts, a video with just music and a printable monkey and map of where they come from. You could integrate superlatives here as the howler monkey is the loudest of all monkeys (hence the name). This could lead onto who is the fastest animal, slowest, biggest etc. http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/
• Here’s a printable colour-template of a howler monkey with labels. http://www.enchantedlearning.com/
• They might be interested to know that the animal with the fastest opening and closing mouth to eat its’ prey isn’t a crocodile or a snake but an ant.
  http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/
• If you go to this link you have teacher’s notes and ideas for integrating superlatives into your lesson. They provide facts such as ‘the largest land animal is the African elephant’. http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/

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The BBC

• These materials have been written for English speaking children but can be easily cut and adapted for your learners. Before you launch into them writing a postcard however I recommend using this Arthur Website - http://pbskids.org/arthur/games/letterwriter/ - so that they can look at the format and the key language they need. You could simply copy this onto some card, cut into strips and get the students in groups to put the different parts of a postcard back into the right order.
• Once you have done some preparation work with them on how to format a postcard and what key phrases you could include such as ‘Dear’, ‘see you soon’ and ‘love from’ you can move onto an electronic postcard with an animal theme. This BBC website has an online postcard they can send to you. You may not want to provide your personal address so you could always create a yahoo account just for your English lessons. In fact, the best way to approach this activity and future activities is to create two different accounts and get everyone to use account A to send the postcard to Account B. Once you have set up the accounts you could use these for any other future lessons where you have computer access and you want them to have some authentic communication. Don’t forget to respond to the emails – you could create one response email, print it and distribute it in the next class to everyone.
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/
• For more advanced students you have here a further postcard related and pronunciation activity.
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/
• Here the BBC has an on-line memory game called The Chimp Challenge. They watch a chimp on-screen and see how he interacts with other chimps. A chimp will come onto the screen and either ‘attack’, ‘give a nut’, or ‘groom’ their chimp. Each looks slightly different. You could drill these commands with TPR (total physical response).* Once they have been shown which chimp does what they will have to recognize each chimp as it arrives and remember what it is going to do. It’s a fun memory, speed game which keeps children on their toes.
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/

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DLTK

• Children love to talk about characters they recognize. You could get them to brainstorm any famous monkeys they can think of. They might say Abu from the Disney film Aladdin, Boots from Dora the Explorer, or Curious George. Here is a bookmark your learners can make of Curious George. You can print it in colour or in black and white for them to colour themselves. They could use these bookmarks for an authentic book you are using with them. They could make up their own monkey book with pictures they draw (or colour) or the howler monkey for example and use the bookmark for that.
  http://www.dltk-teach.com/books/mcgbookmark.html
• Here are words for a traditional song about five little monkeys. You could get them to act out the song and make up a storyboard to display on the wall.
  http://www.dltk-teach.com/rhymes/monkeys/words.htm

You can also show them the song on-line at this school website.
http://www.priorywoods.middlesbrough.sch.uk/

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*TPR is explained here
http://www.pearsonlongman.com/
TPR is a teaching approach which involves language being associated with physical movement and the theory being that it is subsequently easier to remember. TPR lends itself particularly well to language such as classroom commands like ‘stand up’ ‘open your books’, ‘sit down’, or actions such as ‘walk’, ‘jump’ etc.

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