Classroom guides
Three guides, written for someone with a class in twenty minutes. Each one is useful on its own, whether or not you use the generator.
Published . Last updated .
- One animal per child, and why that mattersTeachersRun a class task where nobody gets a duplicate, handle a class bigger than the group, and see the one unfairness randomness cannot fix.
- The six animal groups, in plain wordsTeaching the labelsWhat separates mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates, the trap in each one, and a six-question sorting guide that says where it fails.
- Animal charades that work for any ageGames and partiesRules, timings by age band, what to do about animals nobody can act out, and a ready round of 12.
Which one you need
They solve three different problems, and picking the wrong one wastes the twenty minutes you have.
- You are giving every child an animal and you do not want two children to get the same one. Read one animal per child. It covers the case nobody plans for, which is a class larger than the group you filtered to.
- Somebody in the room has asked whether a whale is a fish, or why a penguin is a bird. Read the six animal groups. It gives each group in a sentence and then names the animals in this catalog that break its rule.
- The class needs to move and you have no materials. Read animal charades. It has the timings by age band and a ready round of twelve, so you can start without preparing anything.
What they assume about you
That you are reading this shortly before you need it. Every guide puts the thing you came for near the top and the explanation of why it works underneath, so you can stop reading as soon as you have what you came for.
That you have a group somewhere between four people and a full class, one adult, and nothing else. No login, no printable pack, no subscription. Where a guide needs the generator it says so and links to it. Where it does not, it does not.
That you will disagree with some of it. The sorting guide in the groups piece is a guide and not a test, and it says where it fails. A child who finds the seam has found something real.
What they will not do
They do not carry animal facts this site cannot stand behind. The catalog holds everyday common names and one group label each, checked at group level across the whole catalog rather than animal by animal, and the guides never reach past that.
Every animal named in a guide is a record in the catalog, including every exception a guide cites. That is deliberate: a child who checks the mudskipper or the pangolin against the generator finds it there, and the rule and the catalog never disagree.
Where the animals come from
You can read all 448 animals on one page, with how the draw works, where the six group labels come from, and what the catalog deliberately leaves out. Read it before you trust a batch in front of a class.
12 of them carry a photograph, and the photo credits name every creator, licence and original file.
For one animal at a time with the class watching rather than a whole batch on paper, use the animal wheel.