APIEReading: Bamboo and its Uses
Bamboo and what people make from it
Answers and an explanation for each question appear once you add this activity to your own library.
Bamboo and What People Make from It
💡 How to Use This Lesson
👨🏫 For Teachers
Guide learners through the 90–110 word article and allow 12 minutes to complete all tasks.
Use the automated evidence-based feedback blocks to review answers and explain key facts in class.
🧑🎓 For Learners
First, read the article carefully and check the word definitions below the text.
Next, answer the 8 questions from easy to hard to check how much you understood.
Bamboo: A Very Useful Plant
Bamboo is a very useful plant. The FAO says that bamboo is a woody grass with a hard stem. INBAR says that some bamboo grows about 75 to 400 millimetres in one day. The FAO says small kinds grow only a few centimetres tall, but the biggest kinds grow to about 30 metres. It says that people in many countries use bamboo to build houses, for posts, roofs, walls and floors. People also make mats, baskets, toys, musical instruments and furniture from bamboo. The FAO also says about 200 kinds of bamboo have shoots, which are young stems coming out of the ground that people can eat.
VOCABULARY Word Bank: Hard Words Explained
The United Nations group for food and farming.
A group of countries that works together with bamboo.
Hard and strong like the wood of a tree.
A young stem that comes up out of the ground.
A unit of length used to measure very small things.
A plant in the grass family with a hard, solid stem.
Bamboo shoots grow directly out of the ground into tall stems.
Useful Sentence Pattern
"The bamboo in our garden is getting taller and taller."
Why this works: We use this pattern when we want to show that something is changing or growing over time.
✏️ Interactive Exercises (Questions 1 to 8)
Answer each question based on the reading text above.
The FAO says that bamboo is a woody grass.
INBAR says that some bamboo grows 50 to 100 centimetres in one day.
According to the FAO, how tall do the biggest kinds of bamboo grow?
Which house parts do people build with bamboo according to the FAO?
Match each bamboo part or product with how people use it:
According to the FAO, how many kinds of bamboo have shoots that people can eat?
Complete the sentence based on the text:
A bamboo shoot is a young stem that comes up out of the ______.
Which group provides the information about how fast bamboo grows each day (75 to 400 millimetres)?
Write the short group name in capital letters (e.g. WHO):
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