Research a type of elephant and present your findings.

Write a piece on what makes you unique like Elmer. Present the piece to the class.

Identify the adjectives within the book then create word search for your friend to find them.
Online Word Search Maker

Decorate and name a new elephant for the front cover of a new book

Use magazine and newspaper cutouts to decorate an elephant for Elmer Day

Read the description of Elmer on page 2. Without showing students the picture get them to draw what they think Elmer looks like.

Read students a page of Elmer without revealing the illustrations. Read it again, showing the illustrations. Discuss how the pictures add meaning to the written text.

After re-reading the story students are given a series of illustrations from Elmer to place in the correct order.

Text innovation: Ask the students to imagine that Elmer was a person. What would Elmer look like if he was a person? What would he be wearing? etc.

Conduct a choral reading session.

Looking at the front cover of the book ask students predict what the book is going to be about.

Draw a story map. Read the book to students and ask them to draw elements of the book onto cards for ordering.

Same Same Different: Compare Elmer (the main character) to the main character in Possum Magic (Hush) using a Venn Diagram. Discuss similarities and differences of the character's traits, actions and personality.

Ask students to choose an elephant from the illustration of Elmer day and write a description about it

Conduct a shared reading session to demonstrate using prediction. Use the projector/smartboard to view an enlarged version of the text.

Ask students to role play how different characters are feeling at points throughout the story. For example, how Elmer is feeling when he paints himself grey or how the other elephants are feeling when Elmer is gone.

Create a puzzle using a photocopy of the front and back covers of the book. Ask students to put the puzzle back together and then label items such as the title, where to turn the page from etc.

Excursion to the Zoo to see the elephants and other African animals. Student right a recount afterwards.

Labelling the body parts of the African animals in Elmer

Research an elephants habitat and present your findings

Using Word, make alliterative sentences about the animals in the book. For example, Elmer the elegant elephant.

Add some high frequency words from Elmer to the word wall. For example, know, what, your, and etc.

Meet and Greet: Use a puppet to represent Elmer and ask students to ask Elmer questions they'd like to know about him or the book.

Lost poster: Using one of the elephants from Elmer day, ask students to create a 'lost' poster describing what they look like.

Possible predictions: whilst reading the book, stop at pre-determined points and ask students to predict what is going to happen next.