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.

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 (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