This resource is shared by teachers of Key Stage One (age 5-7) at Dulwich College Singapore.

Leaf by Sandra Dieckmann is a wonderful book for your KS1 animal habitats or polar regions topic. 

You can find a read aloud here to familiarize yourself with the story Leaf Read Aloud 

The unexpected arrival of a polar bear in the forest has all the woodland animals agitated and afraid. His strange habit of collecting leaves only reinforces their distrust until one day they watch him attempt to fly home over the water on wings of colorful leaves…..

Using the Ladder of Inference is a great way to explore the perspectives of the different animals and their assumptions and beliefs as the story unfolds. These slides provide a starting point for any teacher to adapt and expand for their own class.

Adding connection circles gives another layer of understanding looking at the influence of the main characters on one another.

The slide deck is attached below for you to use and adapt for your class. 

Share the story in whatever way you would normally do that with your class. Enjoy the time to explore and have fun!

Slide activities:

The first slide looks at the various causal loops within the story.

There are two basic types of causal loops: reinforcing (R) and balancing (B).

In a reinforcing loop, change in one direction is compounded by more change. (e.g. money earning interest increases the balance which earns more interest.)

Balancing loops, counter change in one direction with change in the opposite direction. Balancing processes attempt to bring things to a desired state and keep them there. Our body has many of these processes (homeostasis). E.g. hunger signals us to eat which satisfies the hunger until we need to eat again.

The next slide has the class work in groups to explore the story in different ways. You can adapt these to best suit your own class.

The third slide prompts the class the emphasize with each of the characters and leads into a great opportunity to use the ladder of inference. The teacher uses a simplified version of the ladder for this younger age.

The next slides help the class to explore causal links between the characters. How do their thoughts, feelings and actions affect the other characters in the story?

First looking at pairs of characters to see how events increase or decrease in the story.

Then using a connection circle to encourage the class to see how all the characters affect one another.

Work in groups or as a class to generate curiosity and dialogue around these prompt slides.

There are two writing activities. The sentence writing encourages students to express cause and effect. The second is a diary writing activity based on the ladder of inference.