The Vulture Copywork
A tongue-in-cheek cautionary verse warning children not to snack between meals
Free download
Change the words, font or letter size in the DittoSheets builder. Free account, no card.
About this printable
Belloc's mock-moral animal verse is short, funny, and easy to finish, which makes it a great confidence builder. Two neat quatrains give students clean line breaks and straightforward punctuation to practice. Fits naturally into a nonsense-verse unit or a study of cautionary tales. 8 pages, 1/4-inch letters in Dreaming Outloud on dashed manuscript lines. Sheets included: Copywork (Step 1), First Letter Hints (Step 2), Memory Lines (Step 3), Source Text, First Letters Only. Hilaire Belloc, 1897. Public domain text.
ON THIS SHEET: The Vulture eats between his meals, · And that’s the reason why · He very, very rarely feels · As well as you and I. — His eye is dull, his head is bald, · His neck is growing thinner. · Oh! what a lesson for us all · To only eat at dinner! — Hilaire Belloc, 1897. LETTER SIZE: 1/4-inch. HANDWRITING: Dreaming Outloud. SHEETS: Copywork (Step 1), First Letter Hints (Step 2), Memory Lines (Step 3), Source Text, First Letters Only.
- Category Poetry
- Price Free
- Format Printable PDF
- Usage Print unlimited copies
Inside the PDF
3 pages from the 8-page PDF, as they print.
A plan for this set
A short text: Steps 1, 2 and 3 fit in one school week, one sheet a day.
- Days 1–2 Copywork (Step 1). Read the whole text, then copy it exactly.
- Days 3–4 First Letter Hints (Step 2). Write it again with only the first letter of each word as a prompt.
- Day 5 Memory Lines (Step 3). Write it from memory on lines sized to each word.
Paste any poem and print it stanza by stanza as copywork, first-letter hints and memory lines, line breaks kept. Free for 20 pages a month, no card.
Tour every DittoSheets feature to see all the sheet types, fonts and line styles.
