Coconut Crabs by Amy McDaid is a reflective fiction text that explores friendship, anxiety, and intergenerational care through the relationship between a young girl and her grandmother. When Emily’s best friend is away, she develops mysterious stomach pains that conveniently keep her home from school. Through humorous inner monologue and warm dialogue, the story reveals how Emily’s worries about loneliness and fitting in surface as physical symptoms. As the day unfolds, her grandmother Māmā gently challenges Emily’s thinking, using stories, practical wisdom, and a memorable green drink to help her reconnect with her feelings. The shared time outdoors becomes a turning point, showing how listening, honesty, and connection can restore calm and confidence. Warm, funny, and deeply reassuring, the text supports students to understand wellbeing through lived experience and voice. 

The text is ideal for integrated learning across literacy and health, supporting inquiry into emotions, friendship, anxiety, intergenerational relationships, and wellbeing in everyday life.

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 3

Year Level: Year 5

English (NZC Levels 3–4):
reading for meaning and critical thinking, analysing narrative voice and dialogue, understanding character development, exploring humour and theme, making connections to personal experience

Health and Physical Education:
wellbeing, emotional awareness, managing worry, relationships, communication, resilience

Text type:
Fiction, reflective narrative, short story

Key words include:
friendship, anxiety, worry, wellbeing, emotions, grandparents, māmā, family, whānau, loneliness, school, health anxiety, humour, dialogue, inner thoughts, coping strategies, reassurance, intergenerational relationships, care, confidence, resilience