Habitats Lesson One

Expectations for behavior: 

If I raise my hand when I ask a question, I want you to raise your hand and I’ll call on you. If I say “everyone” at the end of question, I want you to all call out the answer.

Objective: At the end of the lesson you will be able to… know that just as there are different habitats, organisms are different too and can survive well or not at all depending on habitat. All students will be able to do 12 different animal walks and can differentiate between the 12 walks.

Introduction (5-7 minutes):

1. Attitude Orientation: Ask, “What is a habitat?” and then show definition slide, that states "a. Place and conditions in which an organism lives. b. Made up of the physical properties of the environment and the relationship to other organisms in the environment." Ask, “What are the KEY WORDS in this definition?” Be sure they are clear on what an “organism” is. 
2. Schema Orientation:  Show slide with the 4 different photos of “Examples of Habitat” as well as the “Microhabitat” slide explaining there are sometimes smaller habitats found inside large ones. 
   
3. Activity Orientation:  Final two slides of power point are:  “TRUE or FALSE: For any particular environment, some types of plants and animals survive well, some survive less well and some cannot survive at all.” And then just simply “TRUE”  Go back to side of four (4) habitats and explain that just as an Arctic Fox that thrives in the tundra would die in the desert – also if we took a lizard or a snake from the desert and put it in the tundra, they too would die.  

State, "because animals are different and survive well or not at all in the many different habitats, we are going to have some fun and learn a few different "animal walks" that represent 12 different animals." 

Activity: 

In a large space (gym or M.P.R.) where the class can move about, demonstrate each of the *12 animal walks. Explain that everyone will need to be able to do these walks in a manner that anyone would be able to differentiate between which animal is being represented.  Ask “What does the word DIFFERENTIATE mean?”  Stating that although the kangaroo, frog and rabbit are all animals that jump, actually modeling how the Kangaroo Jump, Frog Jump, and Rabbit Jump, are quite different. You can see here, when they incorrectly guessed "frog" for the Rabbit Jump, this was a great time to show them how the Frog Jump is different. 

Demonstrating 12 different animal walks can be a lot, so to make it more interesting and playful, it can work to have just have a few students demonstrate each walk with you and have the rest of the class try to guess each animal.  Also gauging the class to see if everyone is staying engaged, once in a while maybe have the whole class “practice” a few of the walks is good.

After teaching them the walks and placing the ANIMAL SIGNS (each sign has 3 of the 12 different animals) onto the orange cones placed at the four “corners” of the “running track” – explain that while the music plays they will be either walking, running, sliding, galloping, skipping, or leaping around the orange cones. Then when the music stops, pick one of the three animals on the orange cone closest to you.

*Kangaroo Jump, Frog Jump, Rabbit Jump, Elephant Walk, Bear Walk, Gorilla Walk, Puppy Dog Walk, Alligator Walk, Seal Walk, Inch Worm Crawl, Crab Walk, Wounded Coyote Walk 

Assessment:

Have them get into groups of 3 or 4 for each student to take a turn to demonstrate 2 different animal walks to get their classmates to guess the animal - reminding them to perform in such a way to "differentiate" each walk.  

After returning to class, have them write in writing journal why they feel different animals survive well or not at all depending on the habitat. (at the start of my next visit, I will have them do this assessment to both review and check to see if they remember what we learned.)

Our next lesson will be about how some animals use camouflage to survive!