Crocodile Lake

Crocodile Lake is a humorous and imaginative story that blends ballet with animal antics in a playful, rhyming narrative. When Sally O'Mally tumbles into a goldfish pool, the resident crocodile seizes his chance to star in Swan Lake. The book uses expressive elements such as italics for emphasis and punctuation cues like question marks and exclamation marks to support fluent reading. The regular text pattern on alternating pages builds confidence, while rhyming pairs (clapped/snapped, silly/frilly) reinforce phonemic awareness. The story features alliteration and compound words like grandparents and goldfish, expanding vocabulary in an enjoyable context. Humour in both language and illustrations adds engagement, while the narrative introduces a range of regular verbs and sentence structures. Crocodile Lake can be used to teach genre awareness, creative storytelling, and expressive reading. Backed by Learning Media's decades of literacy expertise, this title combines fun with pedagogical rigour, supporting both teachers and learners in classroom and guided settings.

Educational Benefits:

• Enhances expression through use of punctuation and italics.
• Builds phonemic awareness with rhyming and alliteration.
• Expands vocabulary with compound words and regular verbs.
• Supports understanding of narrative structure and humour.

Classroom Ideas:

• Create a mini-play or reader's theatre performance based on the story.
• Identify alliteration and create new character names using the same device.
• Compare this story with the ballet Swan Lake and discuss parody.
• Write a humorous story involving an animal in an unexpected role.

Safety & Information:

• Suitable for ages 5+
• Book dimensions: 16.5cm x 14.5cm
• 8 pages, softcover
• Classroom safe; recommended for shared, guided, or independent reading