Peggy


Written by Anna Walker

For ages 3 to 7

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This book is best for:
  • action verbs
  • regular past tense verbs
  • irregular past tense verbs
  • explaining means to a goal
  • identifying obstacles to an action
  • making inferences

Review

Peggy the hen lives in a small house in a quiet street. One day, when she is happily following her daily routine, a strong gust of wind sweeps her up and drops her in the midst of a bustling city. Peggy takes this change of scenery in her stride and happily explores her new surroundings. Beautiful watercolour illustrations show Peggy going shopping, watching a movie, riding the escalator, and trying new food. After a while, Peggy starts growing homesick and cleverly figures out how to get home safely.

Peggy the hen teaches us to embrace circumstances that might be outside our comfort zone and that a change of routine can be exciting sometimes! This book invites discussion around having a positive mindset and being resourceful in unfamiliar situations. Children delight in the comical illustrations that follow Peggy’s journey. The short and simple text allows young children and weak readers to fully interact with the book and draw inferences from their observations. There is an abundance of action verbs in this book with many examples of regular and irregular past tense. This book is also a great choice for targeting higher level semantic skills, such as explaining means to a goal; explaining obstacles to an action; and drawing inferences.

For further speech and language targets, see the list below.


Book Details

Narrative Structure: Reaction Sequence

Story Plot: Journey Tale

Themes:
  • animals – farm, birds
  • location – city
  • transport - train
  • adventure
  • confidence
  • getting lost
  • positive mindset
  • resourcefulness
  • change in routine

Speech and Language Targets

Speech Sounds:
  • /p/ - Peggy, pigeons, picked, people, scooping, hopped, up
  • /g/ - gust, gone, Peggy, began, big
Grammar:
  • adjectives (e.g. small, quiet, bluster, big, cold)
  • action verbs (played, watched, landed, ruffled, hopped, jumped, twirled, tasted, followed, played)
  • conjunction (and, but, so, although)
  • pronouns (she, her, herself)
  • regular past tense
  • irregular past tense (ate, found, flew, caught, swept, saw, sat, began, knew, felt, caught)
Semantics:
  • means to a goal
  • identifying obstacles to an action
  • making inferences (from the pictures)
  • idiom ("rain or shine")
Social-Emotional:
  • change in routine
  • confidence
  • positive mindset
Narrative:
  • time
  • setting
  • weather
  • initiating event
Book Info

Published by Scholastic in 2012 (ISBN: 9781742832715)

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