Search Dog by Rebekah White is an informative non-fiction text that weaves real-life experience with scientific explanation to explore how trained dogs help find lost and missing people across Aotearoa New Zealand. Through first-hand observation and clear description, the text follows Roxy, a search dog in training, and her handler Jana as they practice locating hidden people using scent. The narrative explains how a dog’s sense of smell works, why it is much stronger than a human’s, and how scent trails can be followed over time and across different environments. By combining storytelling with diagrams, photographs, and factual detail, the text shows how search dogs are prepared for real emergencies and how teamwork between humans and animals can save lives. Informative, engaging, and hopeful, the text supports students to understand science and community service through lived experience and voice.

The text is ideal for integrated learning across literacy, science, and health, supporting inquiry into the senses, animal training, problem-solving, and helping others in Aotearoa New Zealand.

 

This pack contains response activities complete with activity explainer videos for supporting teaching and learning reading strategies including:

• Skim and Scan activities
• Summarise activities
• Questioning activities
• Inference activities
• Making Connections activities
• Visualising activities

Curriculum Phase: Phase 2
Year Level: Year 4

English (NZC Levels 2–3): reading for meaning and enjoyment, identifying key ideas and facts, understanding informational and report texts, interpreting visual information, building topic-specific vocabulary

Science – Living World: senses and survival, animal adaptations, human and animal biology, habitats, observation and investigation

Health and Physical Education: wellbeing, safety, teamwork, helping others, community roles

Social Sciences – Aotearoa New Zealand Histories: community service, continuity and change, roles and responsibilities, identity and belonging

Text type: Non-fiction, informational text, explanatory report, case study

Key words include: Aotearoa New Zealand histories, search and rescue, Land Search and Rescue, SAR, volunteers, dogs, search dogs, scent, smell, senses, noses, tracking, lost people, missing people, rescue missions, teamwork, training, handlers, obedience, reward systems, problem-solving, science, adaptation, safety, community action, helping others, national parks, forests, rivers, survival skills, emergencies