Sharks

by Joe Flood

Joe Flood’s Sharks: Nature’s Perfect Predator, published in the Science Comics series, uses comics to explore shark evolution, anatomy, senses, and diversity. Its illustrated explanations help readers look beyond sharks’ frightening reputation and consider their adaptations and ecological importance. Although the supplied listing labels it a fictional picture book, this teaching package treats Flood’s book as nonfiction comics; use selected spreads and read-aloud support for younger students.

Big Idea

Understanding sharks requires looking beyond fear to examine evidence about how these animals live. Writers and illustrators can change readers’ understanding by controlling the pace at which facts, images, and explanations unfold.

Discussion Questions

1.How does Flood’s presentation of sharks support or challenge what you thought about them before reading?
2.Which shark adaptation seems especially useful for survival, and what evidence from the book supports your thinking?
3.How do the pictures and words work together to explain something that would be difficult to show with words alone?
4.Where did you read quickly, and where did you slow down? What about the page made you do that?
5.How might learning more about sharks change the way people talk about or treat them?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes📦 A copy of Sharks by Joe Flood, selected spreads for shared viewing, paper or four-panel templates, pencils, crayons or colored pencils, sticky notes, and chart paper.

Learning Goals

Identify an accurate shark adaptation and explain how it supports survival, using evidence from a selected passage or illustration.
Explain how words, illustrations, and panel sequence work together in nonfiction comics.
Use pacing choices to distinguish a quick action moment from a slower scientific explanation.
Revise a comic after observing how a partner reads and understands it.

Activity Steps

1.Activate and investigate, 5 minutes: Record students’ shark questions and initial ideas. Read selected spreads about shark anatomy or senses, distinguishing documented information from assumptions.
2.Notice pacing, 7 minutes: Compare a visually dynamic passage with an explanation-rich passage. Model how the reader’s eyes move through panels, captions, and illustrations.
3.Select evidence, 5 minutes: Each student chooses one adaptation shown in the book and records an accurate fact, its page or spread location, and why the adaptation matters.
4.Plan and create, 15 minutes: Students make a four-panel comic: introduce a shark, show an action, slow down to explain the adaptation, and finish with an evidence-based takeaway. Use illustration, captions, and labels rather than inventing scientific claims.
5.Partner-read and revise, 8 minutes: Partners read the comics, identify the fastest and slowest moments, and check that the adaptation is understandable. Creators revise one pacing or clarity choice.
6.Share and reflect, 5 minutes: Invite examples and ask students to explain how a design choice helped teach shark science. For K–1, allow drawing, oral explanation, and adult-scribed captions; for grades 2–5, expect increasingly independent writing and source references.

Standards Connections

ELA: RI.K.7, RI.1.7, RI.2.7, RI.3.7 — Explain how illustrations and other visual features contribute to understanding informational text, with grade-appropriate support.
ELA: RI.4.7 and RI.5.7 — Interpret visual information and draw on information sources to develop understanding.
ELA: W.K.2–W.5.2 — Create grade-appropriate informative or explanatory compositions using drawing, dictation, and writing as appropriate.
ELA: SL.K.1–SL.5.1 — Participate in collaborative conversations, build on others’ ideas, and communicate clearly.
Science: NGSS 1-LS1-1 and 4-LS1-1 connections — Explore how animal structures support survival; the comic task supports discussion of these ideas but does not by itself fulfill the complete performance expectations.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

In Joe Flood’s Sharks, the central organizing force is scientific explanation rather than a fictional character’s quest. Shark evolution, anatomy, senses, and diversity give readers a great deal to process, and the comics format distributes that information across words and images. For a Pace-Write-Read study, the key question is not simply “What happens next?” but also “How does the author help us understand the next idea?” Invite students to notice the difference between the speed suggested by an image and the time needed to understand it. An image of a swimming shark may suggest swift movement, while its accompanying explanation asks readers to stop, inspect, and connect a structure to its function. Panel sequence, visual emphasis, captions, and the amount of information on a page all offer opportunities to examine reading pace without assuming that every reader moves through the book at the same speed. The writing lesson is to match pace to purpose: move briskly when introducing an action, then make room for an important explanation. Younger students can rehearse this through drawing and oral storytelling; older students can build short evidence-based comics. Throughout, separate Flood’s observable choices from techniques students are trying themselves, especially when a workshop element is not prominent in the selected pages.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Compare how long students spend looking at a shark image with how long they spend understanding an anatomy or senses explanation. Ask which visual and verbal features make them move ahead or linger.
2. Plot	Distinguish a fictional plot from this book’s explanatory progression through shark science. Have students trace how a selected section develops understanding rather than forcing it into a problem-and-solution story.
3. Prosody	Read a selected caption aloud with phrasing that groups related scientific ideas. Discuss how a pause before an important term can help listeners understand rather than merely make the reading dramatic.
4. Word	Choose a scientific word from a shark-anatomy passage and connect it to its illustration. Notice how an unfamiliar term slows reading, then practice explaining it in accessible language.
5. Concept	Use adaptation as an organizing concept: connect a shark feature to what it helps the animal do. Ask students to explain that relationship instead of simply collecting impressive facts.
6. Voice & Worldview	Examine how the book’s explanatory voice encourages readers to view sharks as animals worth understanding rather than only as threats. Ask students to support their description of that voice with a particular caption or visual choice.
7. Point of View	Distinguish the informational voice explaining sharks from the visual angle used to show them. Compare what readers can learn from an outside view with what they learn from a close-up or internal explanation, where provided.
8. Setting & Place	Identify the marine environments represented in selected pages and connect those surroundings to the sharks being discussed. Separate environmental information supplied by the book from details students merely assume.
9. Original Characters	Treat the sharks primarily as nonfiction subjects, not invented protagonists. If students create a fictional shark guide for their own comics, label that character as invented and keep its science accurate.
10. Dialogue	Check selected panels for speech balloons and distinguish any character speech from explanatory captions and labels. If dialogue is absent, discuss how captions still guide readers, then test an invented question-and-answer exchange in a student comic.
11. Details	Choose one anatomical detail that helps explain a shark’s survival. Discuss why that detail deserves space in a short comic while an unrelated fact might distract from the explanation.
12. Descriptions	Compare what Flood communicates visually about a shark’s body with what the words explain about its function. Have students add a concise description that teaches something beyond what their drawing already shows.
13. Firsts	Find the first introduction of an unfamiliar shark feature or scientific term within a selected section. Notice what support readers receive there and consider how a student comic should introduce its own key idea.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Ask which shark image or fact draws students into a selected spread most immediately. Identify the actual visual or verbal choice responsible, rather than assuming that a frightening image is the only effective hook.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Compare a specific illustrated example with a passage that summarizes a broader scientific idea. Discuss how moving between examples and explanations helps readers understand shark biology.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Invite students to identify a fact that surprised them because it challenged an expectation about sharks. Distinguish the reader’s surprise at new information from suspense deliberately created by withholding an answer.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Use the book’s treatment of shark evolution to discuss shifts across large spans of time without automatically calling them narrative flashbacks. If a selected page leaves a question unresolved, examine the effect; do not assume the book uses all three techniques.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Inspect an actual page or section boundary and ask what information appears before and after it. Discuss whether the break creates curiosity, separates topics, or gives readers a useful stopping point.
19. Pace & Creativity	Have students represent the same shark adaptation once in a single panel and once across three panels. Compare which version better balances an engaging encounter with a clear explanation.
20. Play	Invite students to trace the reading route through a selected comics page using a finger or removable markers. Turn this into a playful investigation of how layout guides the reader without marking the book.
21. Performance	Perform a short shark-science passage aloud, pairing accurate phrasing with pointing to the relevant visual details. Ask listeners where the performer should slow down to make the science clearer.
22. Personality	Discuss how Flood’s selection of facts and visual presentation gives the explanation a recognizable personality. Avoid treating a shark’s illustrated expression as scientific evidence about its feelings.
23. Humor	Look for a genuinely playful wording or visual moment in the pages students examine, rather than assuming one is present. If students add humor to their comics, check that the joke does not reinforce a false claim about sharks.
24. Pause	Stop at an information-rich shark illustration and ask students to name what they can learn only by looking closely. Model a deliberate inspection pause before returning to the next caption.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Examine a selected description for comparison, sound pattern, or vivid imagery, without labeling ordinary scientific prose as poetry. Students can try a clearly signaled simile for a shark feature and check that it does not distort the science.
26. Repetition	Track a scientific term or idea that recurs within the selected reading and discuss how repetition supports understanding. In student comics, repeat the key adaptation term purposefully rather than repeating the same fact in every panel.
27. Rhythm	Notice how alternating between looking at pictures and reading explanations creates a reading rhythm. Compare that rhythm with a student comic that places a long caption in every panel.
28. Punctuation	Inspect punctuation in an actual caption and read it aloud with its intended phrasing. Have students revise one sentence so that punctuation clarifies the shark-science explanation rather than merely adding excitement.
29. Questions	Ask students to turn an anatomy or senses explanation into a question that the passage answers. Distinguish their own inquiry questions from questions actually printed in the book.
30. Compare-Contrast	Choose two sharks represented in the book and compare documented features using words and illustrations. Discuss how organizing one feature at a time can make the comparison easier to follow.
31. Objects	Focus on a concrete feature such as a tooth or fin as an entry point into a larger explanation. Ask how a close view helps readers connect a visible structure with its function.
32. Threes	Select three verified details about a shark feature and test whether that grouping is memorable and manageable. Present this as a student composition strategy, not as a recurring pattern attributed to Flood without evidence.
33. Lists	Turn information from a selected shark passage into a short, accurate list. Compare the list’s quick-reference pace with the fuller explanation offered by the original comics sequence.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Examine the spaces between panels and around words and images on a selected page. Ask how those spaces separate information and where visual crowding would make shark science harder to read.
35. Art & Graphics	Identify information conveyed by the shark illustrations that is not fully repeated in the words. Discuss how scientific visualization differs from decoration and why students must read both images and text.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Create a classroom matching game linking shark features from the book to their functions, with students explaining their evidence. Identify this as a teacher-created extension rather than an interactive feature of the published book.
37. Placement	Study where captions, labels, and focal images sit in a selected panel or spread. Ask students to test whether changing the placement in their own comics makes the scientific explanation easier to follow.
38. Form	Discuss how nonfiction comics let Flood combine sequential reading with visual examination of sharks. Compare a brief passage with a prose-only retelling to identify what each form makes easier to communicate.
39. Dummy	Fold scrap paper into a miniature mock-up of a shark-science comic before creating a finished version. Use rough boxes and captions to test where the encounter, explanation, and final takeaway should appear.
40. Passion	Ask what the book’s sustained attention to sharks suggests about the value of investigating an often-feared animal. Let students choose the documented shark fact they most want others to understand and explain why it matters.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute task: One Shark, Two Speeds. Minutes 0–4: Revisit a selected passage about shark anatomy or senses and identify one verified feature–function relationship. Record its page or spread location. Minutes 4–6: Model a quick action caption followed by a slower explanation, using the passage’s actual information rather than inventing an ability. Minutes 6–13: Students draw a three-panel comic: a shark in its environment, a closer view explaining the chosen adaptation, and a final evidence-based takeaway about the animal. Make the middle panel larger or give it more explanatory space. Minutes 13–17: Partners read each other’s comics, point to the intended slow moment, and explain the science back to the creator. Minutes 17–20: Students revise one caption or layout choice and complete the reflection, “I slowed the reader down when ___ because ___.” K–1 students may draw and dictate; grades 2–5 add their own captions and a source reference. Label any imagined encounter as fictional while keeping the adaptation explanation factual.

Classroom Activities

Slow Down for Shark Science

Students create a four-panel shark-science comic that moves quickly through an ocean encounter, slows down to explain one shark adaptation documented in the book, and ends by challenging a misconception. They test their comic with a partner to discover how panel size, information density, and reading aloud affect pacing.

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