Cathy’s Dreams

by Julie Hart

Te a c h e r ’ s
Material
 c o n t e n t s

To the Teacher ..................................................................................................................... 3

Before Reading .................................................................................................................... 4

After Reading........................................................................................................................ 6

Worksheet 1: Chapters 1-4................................................................................................... 7

Answers to Worksheet 1 ..................................................................................................... 8

Worksheet 2: Chapters 5-8................................................................................................. 9

Answers to Worksheet 2...................................................................................................... 10

Worksheet 3: Chapters 9-12 . ............................................................................................. 11

Answers to Worksheet 3 .................................................................................................... 12

Final Test............................................................................................................................... 13

Answers to Final Test........................................................................................................... 14

Answers to Activities in the Reader .................................................................................. 15

Before using the following teacher’s material, we recommend that

you read the Burlington Reader Series general information leaflet.

Copyright © 2007 Burlington Books


 Cathy’s Dreams

TO T H E TE A C H E R

List of Main Characters

Cathy Harris: a 14-year-old girl. Sukeena: Cathy’s twin sister.
Mr and Mrs Harris: Cathy’s adopted parents. Rahul: Sukeena’s father.
Matau: a tour guide in Sri Lanka. Kiyoma: Sukeena’s mother.
Mrs Numa: the ex-director of an orphanage in Sri Lanka.

P l o t S u mm a r y
Cathy was born in Sri Lanka and adopted as a baby from an orphanage. According to the orphanage
records, her biological parents are dead. Cathy’s adopted parents brought her to live in Cornwell, England.
About a year ago, Cathy started to have strange dreams. In some of her dreams she’s working in a
restaurant. The owner shouts at her a lot. Cathy also dreams about a school trip to a huge rock. There she
sees paintings on a wall and there are two enormous rocks similar to lion’s feet, near the top of the rock.
On 26th December, 2004, Cathy is at the beach with a friend. Her friend and another couple go swimming.
Suddenly, Cathy has a daydream. In the daydream, she is standing on a tropical beach with an orange and
white shell in her hand. Then, the sea recedes and a huge wave starts to move towards the beach. Cathy
thinks her dream is real and is terrified. She tells her friend and the couple to get out of the water. That
evening, Cathy and her parents watch the news and learn that a tsunami hit Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Cathy
feels that she experienced the tsunami in her daydream and she tells her parents this.
After the Christmas holidays, Cathy learns about identical twins in a biology lesson. She thinks that perhaps
she has got a twin sister and that she sees her sister’s life in her dreams. Cathy discusses this theory with
her mother, and Mrs Harris decides to take Cathy to Sri Lanka to find out.
In Sri Lanka, Matau meets them at Colombo airport. Cathy’s mother gives him the address of the orphanage
and he takes them there. But the orphanage no longer exists. Matau helps them find Mrs Numa. She
remembers that she had a few twin girls at the orphanage. The orphanage cook adopted one of the twins,
and she gives Mrs Harris her name. Matau helps Cathy and her mother find the cook but the adopted twin
isn’t Cathy’s sister. Cathy is very disappointed and Mrs Harris is certain that Cathy hasn’t got a twin sister.
They decide to go sightseeing around Sri Lanka before returning home. Matau takes them to Lion’s Rock.
Cathy feels that the place is familiar. Halfway up the rock, they see the wall paintings from her dream.
Matau takes them to a beach resort in the town of Galle and Cathy goes to the beach. She finds a shell like
the one from her dream, and remembers her dream about the tsunami. She meets a boy on the beach. He
describes what happened there on the day of the tsunami. The description is the same as Cathy’s daydream.
That evening, Cathy and her mother eat in a restaurant. Cathy hears a man shouting in the kitchen. She
recognises the voice from her dreams and runs into the kitchen. A girl identical to Cathy is washing dishes.
She is Cathy’s twin sister, Sukeena! Sukeena returns to Cornwall with Cathy for a holiday. The girls
discover that they both dream about each others’ lives. They keep in contact and their dreams stop.

Background
• A tsunami is an enormous earthquake in the ocean. The tsunami of 2004 hit the coastline of the
Indonesian islands, India and Sri Lanka on 26th December killing over 220,000 people and destroying
thousands of homes and businesses.

• Sri Lanka is a tropical island near the south coast of India. It was once under British rule. The official
languages are Sinhala and Tamil, but children also learn English at school. Colombo is the capital of
Sri Lanka. There’s an elephant orphanage north of the capital and many tea plantations in the cooler
mountain regions.

• Lion’s Rock is a popular tourist attraction in Sigriya, Sri Lanka. King Kasyapa built a palace on the rock
in 477-495 AD. He had more than 500 wives and there are pictures of them painted on a wall below the
palace. Near the top, there are two enormous rocks, similar to lion’s feet.

• The Christmas Holidays in England finish immediately after New Year’s Day.


 Cathy’s Dreams

b e f o r e r e ad i n g

Suggestions for Lead-in Activities

These activities are designed to help the students’ reading comprehension. They help to activate the
students’ background knowledge, expectations and ability to predict. At this level, these activities will
usually be conducted in the students’ mother tongue. Students with a strong vocabulary can do some of
these activities in English.
Ask the questions and elicit the answers from the whole class. (Some possible answers are provided in
italics.) If you prefer, students can work in pairs or in small groups.
1. In the story, Cathy collects shells from the beach. What other things do people collect? (stamps, coins,
souvenirs, bottles, etc.) Where do people look for things for their collections? (while they’re travelling,
in shops, advertised on the Internet, in newspapers or magazines or at special clubs or meetings)
2. What do you know about identical twins? (They have got identical genes. They look alike and have
often got the same interests.) Do you wish you had an identical twin? Explain your answer.
3. In the story, Cathy has recurring dreams. Do you ever have recurring dreams? Describe an interesting
dream you once had.
4. What is a tsunami? (a large wave) What causes it? (an earthquake, volcano or earth movements
under the oceans) What damage can it do? (It can travel far inland, destroy buildings and cause many
deaths.)
5. In the story, Cathy travels to Sri Lanka, a beautiful tropical island. Describe the tropical climate.
(hot and wet) What plants and wildlife might Cathy see there? (dense forests, palm trees, elephants,
leopards, monkeys, snakes)
6. Describe an interesting trip you once took. What did you see and do on your trip?

Before Reading Activities

The Before Reading activities in the Burlington Reader Series general information leaflet, page 3, can
be applied to Cathy’s Dreams.
In addition to the activities in the general leaflet, the students can do the following activities.
1. Look at the pictures of the main character, Cathy, on page 2. What do we learn about her? (She is
Asian. She collects shells. She makes figures from shells.)
2. Read the first paragraph on page 3. How did Cathy’s life change? (She started to have strange dreams.)
3. Look at the pictures of the beaches on page 6. Compare them. (In the first picture, the beach is empty
and there are hills in the background. The weather is cold. The girl is wearing warm clothes. In the
second picture, there are palm trees and there are more people on the beach. There are buildings on the
beach. The weather is warm. People are wearing swimsuits.)
4. Read the last two paragraphs on page 10 and the first paragraph on page 11. What does Cathy learn
about in her biology class? (identical twins) How does the information she learns help her understand
her strange dreams? (She thinks that maybe she’s got a twin sister.)
5. Read the second paragraph on page 14. Find two sentences to describe the school children in Sri Lanka.
(The girls had umbrellas and wore long white dresses. The boys wore white shirts and black trousers.)
6. Look at the picture on page 19 and list three examples of food that grows in Sri Lanka. (rice, coconuts,
bananas)


 Cathy’s Dreams

K e y V o c a b u l a ry

1. Pre-teach the words below from the story. Then photocopy the pictures of the people and ask the
students to match the words with the pictures.
1 2 3

.... baby
.... parents
.... guide
.... sisters
.... twins 4 5 6 7
.... daughter
.... worker

2. Pre-teach the verbs below. Then, in turn, ask students to do one of the actions in front of the class.
Tell the class to guess the verb.

wash swim kill shout find drive climb remember

3. Pre-teach the words below. Then photocopy the picture and ask the students to write the correct number
next to each word in the box.

.... sea .... mountains .... shell .... lion .... painting .... rock .... dream .... beach

8
7
6 3

2
4
5

List of Irregular Verbs

The following is a list of irregular verbs (Past Simple) which appear in the story. The page number refers
to the page where the Past Simple tense of the verb first appears. Go over the list with your students. Being
able to recognise these verbs will help them understand the story.

bring – brought (page 24)
come – came (page 4)
drive – drove (page 13)
fall – fell (page 30)
feel – felt (page 21)
find – found (page 28)
get – got (page 13)
give – gave (13)
go – went (page 18)
have – had (page 3)
hear – heard (page 29)
hit – hit (page 8)
know – knew (page 27)
leave – left (page 13)
lose – lost (page 26)
make – made (page 8)
meet – met (page 12)
put – put (page 2)
run – ran (page 27)
say – said (page 5)
see – saw (page 4)
sit – sat (page 17)
speak – spoke (page 3)
stand – stood (page 30)
take – took (page 24)
tell – told (page 5)
think – thought (page 11)
understand – understood
(page 11)
wake – woke (page 6)
wear – wore (page 3)
write – wrote (page 19)

Suggestion: Ask the students to choose 20 verbs and write the base forms and Past Simple forms randomly
on a piece of paper. Then ask the students to swap papers and circle as many pairs of verbs as they can.


 Cathy’s Dream

A F TE R R E A D ING

drama activities

Work with a partner or a group. Learn one of the dialogues below and act it out in front of the class.

1. Cathy and her friend, Lizzy, are going to
the beach.
Lizzy: I want to go to the beach.
Cathy: OK. Let’s go.
Lizzy: I’m going in the water.
Cathy: You’re crazy! The sea is freezing!
Lizzy: It’s very cold but it’s fun.
(A man and woman arrive at the beach.)
Man (to woman): Come on, Jane. Let’s swim.
Cathy: Come out of the sea! It’s dangerous!
Lizzy: What’s wrong, Cathy? Are you OK?
Man: You frightened us. What was the
problem?
2. Cathy and Mrs Harris are watching the news. other’s thoughts?
Mrs Harris: T
 his is terrible. We must do
something to help those poor people!
(Mr Harris arrives home.)
Mr Harris: Were the waves very high?
Cathy: Yes. They were higher than our
house.
Mrs Harris: How do you know that?
Cathy: I saw the tsunami. I had a daydream
about it.
Mr Harris: Maybe you’re telepathic, Cathy. But
why did you think about the tsunami?
It happened so far away.
Mrs Harris: Cathy was born in Sri Lanka. She’s
got a strong connection with that
country.
3. Cathy is in a biology class.
Mrs Davis: Sometimes identical twins live
with different families and they
still behave identically.
Mary: How can that happen?
Mrs Davis: Sometimes people adopt only
one twin. The twins grow up
with different parents, but their
identical genes influence them.
Mary: And do those twins like the same
things?
Mrs Davis: They often do.
Cathy: Can identical twins read each
Mrs Davis: Some people believe they can.
4. Cathy is talking to a boy on the beach at
Galle.
Boy: Are you OK? You look frightened.
Cathy: Was there a tsunami in this area?
Boy: Yes, there was. But we were lucky.
Many buildings here are far from the
beach.
Cathy: Did you see the wave?
Boy: Yes. It happened on my birthday. I
was on the beach that day. Everyone
knew that they were in great danger.
We all ran from the beach.
Cathy: Were the people on the beach OK?
Boy: Yes. We ran to higher ground.

Project Suggestions

You may want to present some of these activities in the students’ own language.
1. Imagine that you are Cathy. Write an entry in your diary. Talk about your thoughts and feelings after the
biology lesson.
2. Trace a map of Sri Lanka. Label it and circle the places Cathy and her mother visit.
3. Work in groups. Make a holiday brochure. Use information from the story to encourage people to visit
Sri Lanka. Write everything in English.
4. Imagine that you are a reporter. Write a magazine article about Cathy and Sukeena. Give it the
following title: CATHY FINDS HER TWIN SISTER!
5. Work with a partner. One of you is Cathy and the other is Sukeena. Together, write a dialogue between
the two of you when you first meet each other.
6. Work with a partner. Write a list of the differences between the lives of Cathy and Sukeena. Compare
your list with another pair in the class.
7. Look in an encyclopedia or search on the Internet to find information about Lion’s Rock in Sri Lanka.
Write a paragraph about the information you find and read it to the class.

 Cathy’s Dreams

W O R K S H EET 1 : Cha p t e r s 1 - 4

A. Complete the verb below each picture.

1 2 3 4

_u__ s___t w__h _mi__

5 6 7 8

l___e _l__b _a__h _ _ i _

B. Complete the sentences with the verbs in Exercise 1.

1. I don’t usually ......................... at people. But I’m angry now.
2. Come and ......................... in the sea.
3. I’m taking a photo of you. Please ......................... for the camera.
4. We tried to ......................... to the top of the rock.
5. The man will ......................... from the rock into the sea.
6. Every evening, we ......................... the news on TV.
7. I ......................... the dishes after every meal.
8. We’ll ......................... the restaurant at the end of our meal.

C. Tick (✓) the correct answers.

1. What does Cathy do every day? 4. What did Cathy see in her daydream?
a b c a b c

2. Which place is sometimes in Cathy’s 5. In Cathy’s daydream, what did she have in
dreams? her hand?
a b c a b c

3. In Cathy’s dream about Lion’s Rock, what 6. What did Mrs Davis talk about in her
was on the rock next to the lion’s feet? biology class?
a b c a b c


 Worksheet 1: Chapters 1-4

A NS W E R S

A. 1. jump
2. shout
3. wash
4. smile
5. leave
6. climb
7. watch
8. swim

B. 1. shout
2. swim
3. smile
4. climb
5. jump
6. watch
7. wash
8. leave

C. 1. c
2. a
3. a
4. c
5. b
6. c


 Cathy’s Dreams

W O R K S H EET 2 : Cha p t e r s 5 - 8

A. Circle the words that refer to people to find the right way to the top of Lion’s Rock.

umbrella
sister

ge nd
villa husba
cook field
r
embe
rem dream
manager addr
ess
car

hter
daug

job
er
work
ide
gu

B. Find seven words below. Then use them to complete the sentences.

t eaflyrive
dr i v e rtr
er
ees
ricesumm

1. I’m going to ........................ in a plane. 5. ........................ is a hot drink.

2. Coconuts grow on ........................ . 6. I eat ........................ with meat.
3. In the ........................ , the weather is hot. 7. I’ll ........................ the car to the hotel.
4. Turtles swim in the ........................ .

C. Complete the sentences with the people below. Then put the sentences in the correct order.

Liyoni Janghi Liyoni Janghi’s Mrs Harris Cathy Matau Mrs Numa
daughter
...... 1. ...................................... met Cathy and Mrs Harris at the airport.
...... 2. Cathy saw ...................................... and she was disappointed.
...... 3. ...................................... told Mrs Harris about her daughter.
...... 4. ...................................... tried to remember the name of her cook.
...... 5. ...................................... and ...................................... visited the director of the
orphanage.

 Worksheet 2: Chapters 5-8

A NS W E R S

A. guide, worker, daughter, manager, cook, husband, sister

umb
rella
sister
ge nd
villa husba
cook field
ber
rem
e m
manager add dream
car ress

hter
daug

job
er
work
ide
gu

t eaflyrive
dr i v e rtr
er
ees
ricesumm
B. 1. fly
2. trees
3. summer
4. river
5. Tea
6. rice
7. drive

C. 1. Matau; 1
2. Liyoni Janghi’s daughter; 5
3. Liyoni Janghi; 4
4. Mrs Numa; 3
5. Cathy; Mrs Harris; 2

10
 Cathy’s Dreams

W O R K S H EET 3 : Cha p t e r s 9 - 1 2
A. Circle two words that belong to each category.
1. Food: cakes paint chicken pocket
2. Places: breakfast factory kitchen fruit
3. Transport: basket head train plane
4. Parts of the body: mouth dinner heart life

B. Complete the sentences with the words from the box. Then match the sentences to the
pictures.

relax monkeys chat tour sand killed

1. Cathy and Mrs Harris went on a ......................... of Sri Lanka.

2. ......................... like to climb on rocks.
3. Mrs Harris was tired. She wanted to ......................... in the sun.
4. People find shells in the ......................... .
5. The tsunami ......................... many people.
6. People often ......................... to their friends on the Internet.

a b c

d e f

C. Read the sentences. Where did Cathy do these things? Write the correct letter next to each
sentence.
a b
...... 1. She saw wall paintings.
...... 2. She learned about tea.
...... 3. She met a boy.
...... 4. She saw monkeys.
...... 5. She saw the man and woman from
her dreams. c d

...... 6. She learned about the tsunami.

...... 7. She tasted different types of tea.
...... 8. She found her sister.

11
 Worksheet 3: Chapters 9-12

A NS W E R S

A. 1. cakes; chicken
2. factory; kitchen
3. train; plane
4. mouth; heart

B. 1. tour picture a
2. Monkeys picture f
3. relax picture e
4. sand picture b
5. killed picture d
6. chat picture c

C. 1. b
2. d
3. a
4. b
5. c
6. a
7. d
8. c

12
 Cathy’s Dreams

F IN A L TEST

A. Match each word to the correct picture.

1. worker 2. tea 3. river 4. cook 5. sisters 6. sand 7. cakes 8. factory

a b c d

e f g h

12 points (1.5 points each)

B. Write T (True) or F (False) next to each sentence.

...... 1. Cathy’s biological parents are both dead.
...... 2. The tsunami killed people in Cornwall.
...... 3. Cathy saw Lion’s Rock in her dreams.
...... 4. Cathy went to Sri Lanka in spring.
...... 5. The children’s orphanage wasn’t there any more.
...... 6. Mrs Numa didn’t remember Cathy.
...... 7. Liyoni Janghi adopted Cathy’s twin.
...... 8. People use the biggest leaves on the tree to make tea.
...... 9. There aren’t any homes near the beach in Galle.
18 points (2 points each)

C. Match A and B to form sentences about the story.

A B
1. Cathy’s parents adopted her ...... a. a train on the railway line.
2. The woman in Cathy’s dreams ...... b. an orange and white shell.
3. The cook from the orphanage ...... c. from an orphanage in Sri Lanka.
4. Cathy saw the lion’s feet ...... d. in her parents’ restaurant.
5. On the beach at Galle, Cathy found ...... e. had pretty eyes.
6. The tsunami wave hit ...... f. found a job in Kibissa.
7. Sukeena washed dishes ...... g. on the rock.
14 points (2 points each)

D. Match a suitable sentence from Exercise C to each picture.

a b c d

6 points (1.5 points each)

13
 Final Test

answers

A. 1. d
2. g
3. a
4. f
5. b
6. h
7. e
8. c

B. 1. T
2. F
3. T
4. F
5. T
6. T
7. F
8. F
9. T

C. 1. c
2. e
3. f
4. g
5. b
6. a
7. d

D. a. 4
b. 6
c. 7
d. 1

14
 Cathy’s Dreams

A NS W E R S TO A CTI V ITIES IN T H E R E A D E R

page 3: She dreams about a school in a foreign country (picture B).

page 5: They celebrated Christmas (picture C).
page 8: It hit Sri Lanka and Indonesia (pictures A and C).
page 11: She believes she has got a twin sister (picture C).
page 13: The boy on the beach, not Matau, gives Cathy a shell; Matau takes Cathy and Mrs Harris on a
tour in his car, not in a bus; It isn’t snowing in Sri Lanka, it’s hot and sunny.
page 16: Mrs Numa lives at the second address (picture A).
page 18: The cook at the orphanage adopted the other twin (picture B).
page 22: There are wall paintings in the middle of the steps at Lion’s Rock (picture C).
page 24: She wants to lie in the sun and relax (picture B).
page 27: The correct order is B, A, D, C.
page 29: Cathy wants to eat chicken (picture C).
page 32: Sukeena went to Lion’s Rock (picture A).

15