Week 8- Assignment 1

As I began to read the passage, right away the word ‘Hoatzin’ jumped out at me, as it is one I’ve never heard of before. This is when my brain begins to work on what does this mean? How can I find out? Perhaps It can be some sort of animal or from of prey that has to escape from predators. And then I read further about how its builds a home in a branch near water so I thought it can’t be that big if it can live in a tree. The next two lines let me know that it had claws so I thought maybe its some sort of bird, which can live in trees and survive in water. This sort of embedded the idea in my head when I read the last line which confirmed they have wings that have claws, so now I was thinking of some exotic weird looking bird with finger-like claws and wings with claws as well.  After completing the passage, I drew a picture of a bird that had some sort of claws on the wings and claws with five fingers as well. I added some plumage and feathers for fun and I then googled an actual image of an hoatzin to compare my picture versus a real one. I was actually really surprised to see , while not looking like the picture, I wasn’t too far off with the feathers part and that a hoatzin was actually a really pretty tropical bird found near swamps in areas such as the Amazon in South America. In order to achieve a form of comprehension, there was the reader (myself) , the text (on the hoatzin) and the context, where I was aiming to draw a picture so therefore I was looking for clues to help me visualize what this creature may look like and to help me understand what it may be. Prior knowledge of birds helped me with visualizing what a hoatzin may look like.