Investigation 1 Extension - Animal Riddles

Overview: This lesson builds on the prior activities designed to engage students in actively thinking about an animal’s habitat. Students work together to create their own riddles about a given animal, demonstrate knowledge of that animal, its characteristics, and its habitat.

Focus Question:

• What lives where and why?

Engagement and Exploration: (25 minutes)

Play the Mystery Animal Game again (see Investigation 1B), but this time give photos or pictures of selected animals to teams of students and have them make the clues for the animal. Remind students to use clues that are about the animal’s habitat: what the animal eats, where it lives, what it uses for shelter, whether it is solitary or lives with others of its kind. Be sure that students record their riddles either in their science notebooks or on a separate sheet of paper, before sharing them with the class.

Explanation: (10 minutes)

Ask students to glue the picture of their animal in their science notebooks and draw an appropriate habitat for that animal. Students should label as much of the animal’s habitat as they can, to demonstrate their understanding of how the animal’s needs are met where it lives.

Elaboration (30-100+ minutes)

• Students can create a Riddle Book modeling the Mystery Animal Game using the riddles they worked on in their groups. Students should be encouraged to illustrate the book pages.
• Students may begin to think about whether their animal is specific to a region, a country, or possibly a continent and locate their animal’s environment on a map.
• Students can design a diorama that creates a habitat for their animal.

Evaluation: (Assessment and Scoring)

Students will have written a riddle and glued it in their science notebooks. If the focus of the clues is on the animal’s habitat, you should be able to discern a student’s ability to consider an animal’s characteristics as well its need for a specific habitat. Each student should have drawn an appropriate habitat for the animal glue-in.

Teacher Preparation:

Locate and cut out pictures from magazines or have on hand other color photos of animals that children will be familiar with. These pictures can be animals found locally, or animals that students have studied. The pictures should be small enough to fit in the student’s science notebooks covering no more than 1/4 of the page. This allows the student room to elaborate on the habitat that they will draw of the animal in the photo.

Curricular Connections:

Writing. Standard L2. Writing a complete sentence with subject and predicate.

Art. Design and illustrate an animal habitat.

Geography. Locate places on a map.

Alaska Science Standards and Grade Level Expectations Addressed:

1st and 2nd Grade Standards Addressed
A1 - Science as Inquiry and Process
SA Students develop an understanding of the processes and applications of scientific inquiry.
SA1 Students develop an understanding of the processes of science used to investigate problems, design and conduct repeatable scientific investigations, and defend scientific arguments.

C1 - Concepts of Life Science
SC Students develop an understanding of the concepts, models, theories, facts, evidence, systems, and processes of life science.
SC3 Students develop an understanding that all organisms are linked to each other and their physical environments through the transfer and transformation of matter and energy.

G1 – History and Nature of Science
SG Students develop an understanding of the history and nature of science.
SG3 Students develop an understanding that scientific knowledge is ongoing and subject to change as new evidence becomes available through experimental and/or observational confirmation(s).
SG4 Students develop an understanding that advancements in science depend on curiosity, creativity, imagination, and a broad knowledge base.

3rd grade Grade Level Expectations
The student develops an understanding of the processes of science by:
[3] SA1.1 asking questions, predicting, observing, describing, measuring, classifying, making generalizations, inferring and communicating.
[3] SA1.2 observing and describing their world to answer simple questions.

The student demonstrates an understanding that interactions with the environment provide an opportunity for understanding scientific concepts by:
[3] SA3.1 observing local conditions that determine which plants and/or animals survive. (L)

The student demonstrates an understanding that all organisms are linked to each other and their physical environments through the transfer and transformation of matter and energy by:
[3] SC3.1 identifying and sorting examples of living and non-living things in the local environment. (L)
[3] SC3.2 organizing a simple food chain of familiar plants and animals. (L)

The student demonstrates an understanding of the bases of the advancement of scientific knowledge by:
[3] SG2.1 comparing the results of multiple observations of a single local event. (L)

The student demonstrates an understanding that advancements in science depend on curiosity, creativity, imagination, and a broad knowledge base by:
[3] SG4.1 asking questions about the natural world.