Animal sea rescue
Overview
Animal rescue is a topic that captures a lot of children’s imaginations. It also provides plenty of drama to help with ideas for writing. This session gives you and your learners inspiration and tips to try out different writing styles including news articles and stories.
Intro
The RNLI often gets called out to rescue animals on or near the water. In this session children can look at different stories from the news to use as inspiration for their own article or story based either on one of the real-life rescues or their own imagined one.
What you need
- Access to guide and ideas below
- Access to online video and articles (links provided)
- Pen and paper or alternative way to record notes and final written pieces
What to do
- Step 1: Read about RNLI animal rescues
- Step 2: Choose a writing activity
Step 1: Read about RNLI animal rescues
Did you know that RNLI lifeguards also rescue animals? This activity will help you find out more about this and has some interesting things to try.
Watch the short video about it on the RNLI website and choose a follow up activity. Select the video titled ‘Fantastic bests and where we save them’.
https://rnli.org/youth-education/education-resources/videos
Other stories to use with your chosen activity can be found on the RNLI magazine site. You can filter the news stories and choose ‘animals’ as a filter option. Use this link to go to the filtered stories: https://rnli.org/news-and-media?display=grid&resultsPerPage=12&tags=animals. Read through the stories first to check for which may be suitable or not for the children you work with.
Step 2: Choose a writing activity
From what you’ve seen on the video clip in Step 1, imagine an animal rescue situation. Choose one of the options below.
Option 1: Write a newspaper article about it
Take a look at this article on the BBC’s Newsround website. It is a good example of a newspaper article about an animal sea rescue.
It has an eye-catching headline: Fantastic ferret rescue from the sea by RNLI lifeboat. The alliteration (words beginning with the same letter) works well. It is quite a long headline though – perhaps something a bit shorter and snappier might be better.
The first line of the story is in bold. It tells you the main bit of information. You can then read on to find out more. The article includes quotes from people who were involved. The information is presented in clear and concise sentences.
Copy this style to write your own short article based on a real or imagined animal rescue. You could try re-writing the ferret rescue article. Write it in your own words and see if you can make it even better than the original.
You can also present a piece of news as photographs with captions. Have a look at this article also on the Newsround website about some cows being rescued.
The captions for the photographs are a mixture of informative and funny. Try writing your own captions for the pictures. You could make up your own animal rescue story and draw pictures to tell it. Add captions to give the reader more information.
Option 2: Animal rescue story
(If writing a whole story feels too much, children could just write or discuss ideas for a story.)
Many authors use real-life events to inspire their stories. They might hear or read about them on the news, they may have been told about it from a friend, or witnessed it themselves. For this writing activity, you can use one of the stories you have read about (or purely your imagination) to write a short story about a pet or other animal getting stuck in the water or on rocks and getting rescued. You could write this from the point of view of the lifeguard, the owner, or even the animal.
The rescue stories on the RNLI website or other news sources will not only give you plot and character ideas, but will also help you know what equipment is used (such as a special dog rescue bags for lifting dogs up into a helicopter) and also how they go about rescuing animals in different and often difficult situations. What the rescuers and those whose pets need rescuing say about their experience will help you write about the different character’s feelings.
Option 3: Discuss animal rescue
Have a conversation with someone about what you think or just write your thoughts down for yourself. Respond to the questions below to help get your conversation or thoughts started.
How do you think it feels to be a lifeguard rescuing an animal from the sea?
Is this a job you’d like to do? Can you say why or why not? Where would you like to do it?
What dangers are there for animals by water (such as at the seaside, on coastal paths, by rivers etc)?
Did anything surprise you about the animals you saw being rescued in the articles/videos you looked at?
Do you think humans should risk their lives to save animals? Why/why not? To what extent? (How much risk should they take?) Does what sort of animal it is (pet, farm animal, other) make a difference to your answer?