Portfolio – “The missing cat “ by karin abayev

The missing cat -story

The owner of a missing cat is asking for help. “My baby has been missing for over a month now, and I want him back so badly,” said Mrs. Brown, a 56-year-old woman. Mrs. Brown lives by herself in a trailer park near Clovis. She said that Clyde, her 7-year-old cat, didn’t come home for dinner more than a month ago. The next morning he didn’t appear for breakfast either. After Clyde missed an extra-special lunch, she called the police.

When the policeman asked her to describe Clyde, she told him that Clyde had beautiful green eyes, had all his teeth but was missing half of his left ear, and was seven years old and completely white. She then told the officer that Clyde was about a foot high.

A bell went off. “Is Clyde your child or your pet?” the officer suspiciously asked. “Well, he’s my cat, of course,” Mrs. Brown replied. “Lady, you’re supposed to report missing PERSONS, not missing CATS,” said the irritated policeman. “Well, who can I report this to?” she asked. “You can’t. You have to ask around your neighborhood or put up flyers,” replied the officer.

Mrs. Brown figured that a billboard would work a lot better than an 8″x11″ piece of paper on a telephone pole. There was an empty billboard at the end of her street just off the interstate highway. The billboard had a phone number on it. She called that number, and they told her they could blow up a picture of Clyde (from Mrs. Brown’s family album) and put it on the billboard for all to see.

“But how can people see it when they whiz by on the interstate?” she asked. “Oh, don’t worry, ma’am, they only whiz by between 2 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. The rest of the day, the interstate is so full of commuters that no one moves.” They told her it would cost only $3,000 a month. So she took most of the money out of her savings account and rented the billboard for a month.

The month has passed, but Clyde has not appeared. One day a boy who passed the street saw the billboard and  noticed Clyde he immediately called Mrs. Brown And let her know the good news. She was so excited, the boy came to Mrs. Brown’s house and handed the cat back to her.

Comics:

Instructions: Read the comic and in the empty windows Try to complete the continuation of the story according to your opinion.

Web-based application used to introduce and teach vocabulary:
I will present the students with this cloud of opinion and each child in turn will approach the board and try to write a sentence containing at least one word of this vocabulary. In the written sentence, the student will try to guess the connection of the words to the story that is being learned.

Instructions:
Try to write a sentence  that contains at least one  of the word from  this vocabulary. In this way you can try to guess the connection of the words and the picture to the story that is being learned.

Mind-map
I will introduce this mind-map and students will add the correct word based on the vocabulary that we studied in class and based the information from the story.
Instructions: add the correct word based on the vocabulary that we studied in class and based the information from the story.

Find the words from the word box and  marked them in bulk:

P Y S D E W T G S A X P P B G

V S R N T S A A Y H V R A C N

O L U C Q T R Y C K W S P D I

U W E E A R O P V G L P C E S

S S N F X A U P O L I C E Z S

A P N E S I D R O B L L I B I

R C H W R L V V D Y U X R T M

H S A H O E G K I N J E F Y T

H Q Z F C R G I C R A H A J E

G H O L S P B H C K P W C V P

W V G X C A I S F M H A L K Q

P L E H F R F A R G C X Y U U

R Q H F X K S O I M O K D K E

X F Y Z Q T A H Q R I U E Z X

Y E G Z K C C Z F I L B U M S

Word box

BILLBORD

BREAKFAST

CAT

CLYDE

HELP

HIGHWAY

LUNCH

MISSING

MRSBROWN

OWNER

PET

POLICE

TRAILERPARK

Post reading activity

Links to American questions after reading the story-The missing cat

 https://goo.gl/forms/ezPg5PwKBb83Ldko1

Video clips – on the topic “lost and found“

Pre –listening task:
Guess the dialogue:

I will play the short clip with the sound off. And divided the students into pairs. Each pair will create a script that tries to guess about what the video talking. They will be the writers and the actors of the video. Each pair will come to the board and present its dialogue. Finally, I will play the video again for the students so that they could compare their ideas to the real thing.

Practice speaking:
Have you ever had a pet? Have you ever wanted any pet? Which one? How would you named  you’re pet? If you were Clyde how would you feel in his place? What would you like to say to Mrs. Brown? Where will you hide most likely?
To answer these question, please visit the site “voki`` in this link:https://www.voki.com/site/create

Choose from one of the cat characters on the site and imagine that this cat is Clyde. now you are in his head. In the text box write down the answers to the questions that you asked on top. After you have written the paragraph in the box you can hear the text from the cat’s mouth and share your opinion and thoughts with the class members through the animation of the cat.

In this link you can see an example of the voki that I created:
http://tinyurl.com/ybz92jgm

Blog / Forum- Are useful for getting answers, share ideas, opinions, and thoughts and so on.

 According to the text that I chose “The missing cat“, I can open a forum where each students can share about a pet that he have/had or a one that he would like to have.
The students can also share about things that they lost once and the story behind the thing that was lost, Was it important to them? How did they feel when they discovered it was lost? And did they find it?
In the same time the students can also offer ideas to Mrs. Brown in what ways she can locate her beloved cat.

Students can share ideas and ways and even suggest improvements for the ideas of their friends.

This way broadens their horizons and opens up new ideas that they themselves have not thought of before and that can help them maybe find their thing that they lost before.
In this way students also improve their to writing skills in English and vocabulary. They also learn how to express their opinions and think outside the box in creative ways to solve the problem.

Web –site for language games and grammar:

https://www.gamestolearnenglish.com/prepositions-game/

In this game you get pictures and sentences that guides you how to design rooms or certain places like a living room. It give you observation where to place your furniture, pets and more. The picture that we get in the end is very similar to Mrs. Brown’s living room and even Clyde appears there. The game improves students’ reading ability and understanding instructions and reading comprehension.

        The End !