Concrete Jungle follows the story of a little girl Maria who is envious of her cousin’s school in the country because it has trees to climb and a garden while her school is all concrete. She comes up with a plan to make her school playground colourful and exciting. Features of the Book – Colloquial language – awesome, concrete jungle, wow, – Direct speech, – Ellipses and hyphens, – Specialised vocabulary – artist, brainstorm, creek, hardware, mural, permission, waterfall, – Third-person narrative, Word Study Opportunities – Compound words – brainstorm, outline, paintbrushes, waterfall, – Double vowel “oo” – good, school, shook, – Verb ending “ed” – asked, grumbled, painted, – “ly” word ending – excitedly, nervously, – Multisyllabic words – colourful, dinosaurs, grandparents, permission, – Regular and irregular plurals – bushes, butterflies, houses, ideas, Purpose Concrete Jungle can be used to introduce and reinforce the following standards-related skills: – relating the characters settings and plot to real-life situations, – reading aloud with expression, – forming and supporting opinions about a text, – exploring dialogue, – exploring word families, – writing using capital letters and punctuation appropriately.
Themes covered in this book are: Problem Solving, School and Community
Reading Level:19-20 (Purple)