Description
Rescuing Waitangi Dog by Anna Mackenzie is a powerful, real-life narrative from School Journal | Year 4 (November 2025) that tells the story of how a community came together to rescue and rehome a stray dog following Cyclone Gabrielle in Hawke’s Bay. Set in the aftermath of severe flooding, the text highlights patience, kindness, communication, and the importance of understanding others—both people and animals—after a traumatic event.
This text supports students to develop comprehension and inference skills through authentic, engaging content. Students explore how information is organised, how language conveys emotion and purpose, and how themes are developed across the text. The inclusion of factual explanations about dog behaviour further supports integration with Health and Physical Education, particularly around relationships, empathy, and safe interactions with animals.
This pack contains a range of structured literacy activities including
- Spelling rules ck / dge / drop the e / y as a consonant or vowel
- Sounds of -ed
- Exploring parts of language - adverbs, adjectives, nouns, verbs etc
- Doubling or not when adding -ing, -ed
- Floss rules
- Compound words
- Identifying and naming suffixes
- Identifying and naming prefixes
- Vowel teams
- Root words
- Controlling 'r'
- Diagraphs
- Schwa words
- Ghost diagraphs
- -oo- and -oo- / -au and -ow /
- Hard and soft c and g
- Common subordinating conjunctions
- And much more!!
Curriculum Phase: Phase 2
Year Level: Year 4
English – Reading: comprehension, inference, visual literacy, narrative structure, character development, themes, author’s purpose, making connections
Health and Physical Education (Wellbeing): relationships, empathy, kindness, belonging
The Arts (Visual Arts): creativity, visual storytelling, responding to and interpreting artworks
Text type: Graphic text / narrative fiction
Key words include: animal rescue, communication, community, comprehension, Cyclone Gabrielle, cyclones, curriculum-aligned texts NZ, dog behaviour, dog language, dogs, empathy, floods, friendship, generosity, Hawke’s Bay, inference, kindness, non-fiction, pets, real-life narrative, relationships, resilience, SPCA, themes, volunteers, weather
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