Week 1: June 1-5

Animals

Overview: This week is dedicated to introducing a grand challenge in the realm of STEAM education. The students will also be introduced to the

design process model and explore it during this week. The students will be exploring the grand challenge question using the design process:

How can technology help animals in their environment?

DAY 2: Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Goals for the day:

Students should be able to indicate some survival methods that animals use to assist in survival.

Students should be able to distinguish the differences between adaptations, camouflage and mimicry.

Students should be able to illustrate the concept of animal adaptations.

8:30-9:30: Block 1

PURPOSE: Within this hour, students will be able to continue a rapport with their classmates and teachers.

Morning Meeting is an engaging way to start each day, build a strong sense of community, and set children up for success socially and

academically. Each morning, students and teachers gather together in a circle for twenty to thirty minutes and interact with one another during

four purposeful components:

1. Greeting: Students and teachers greet one other by name.

a. Quick and Easy i. Quick and Easy is where students will choose either a handshake, wave, fist bump or elbow touch to greet each other.

2. Sharing: Students share information about important events in their lives. Listeners often offer empathetic comments or ask clarifying

questions.

a. Students may sit or stand in a circle and take turns finishing the following sentence. “If I were an animal, I would be a....”

3. Group Activity: Everyone participates in a brief, lively activity that fosters group cohesion and helps students practice social and

academic skills (for example, reciting a poem, dancing, singing, or playing a game).

a. 2 Truths and a Lie-Students will pair with a partner and take turns with their partner explaining two truths and one lie. The

partner in return will share what they believe to be the lie. The students make continue a few times, or they may choose

another partner. Please model how this activity works before the students are separated into partners.

4. Morning Message: Students read and interact with a short message written by their teacher. The message is crafted to help students

focus on the work they’ll do in school that day. The message can be written on chart paper or on a whiteboard for the students and

teacher to read.

a. Hey students, Yesterday, we learned all habitats. Today, we are going to explore adaptations, camouflage, and mimicry that

animals use for survival. Have you heard of any of these words? Are you ready to get started? Love, your teacher

9:30-10 Outside/snack

● Take students outside to play with sidewalk chalk, if allowed or bubbles. The children should also be enjoying their

snack during this time.

10-11 Block 2:

PURPOSE: By the end of this hour, students should be able to review over the definition and characteristics of animal habitats.

● Review-Review with the students on the previous day by displaying the anchor chart that was created with the

class regarding animal habitats. Discuss with the children about Ivan the Gorilla and ask “Why was Ivan so special?”

● B & I Circus Store vs. Atlanta Zoo Activity- You may want to re-read the story “Ivan: The Remarkable True Story

of the Shopping Mall Gorilla by Katherine Applegate. Students will compare and contrast features of Ivan’s shopping

mall habitat to Ivan’s zoo habitat. Draw a Venn Diagram on the board. Provide the students with the following feature

cards and you may also provide a few blank index cards for the students to write their own features. Have students tape

the features onto the whiteboard. Once completed, have a class discussion about which features of the habitats are

most healthy for gorillas.

11:00-11:30 Video Discussion- Display the following video from YouTube. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kov0fijvhpM&t=162s)

● After displaying the video, create an anchor chart with the students’ responses to the following question, “What do you remember from

the video?”

11:30-12:30 Block 3:

PURPOSE: By the end of this hour, students should be able to understand the concept of animal survival.

M & M Survival: Begin the conversation and ask the students “How do animals survive?” After the students respond, separate them in groups.

First you will need to prepare a mixed group of "prey." Do this by counting and placing 10 M&M's of each color into a plastic bag .This means you

should have one plastic bag with 10 yellow, 10 blue, 10 green, 10 brown, 10 red, and 10 orange M&M's candies in it. Prepare different "habitats"

using Skittles candies. Do this by counting and placing 60 Skittles of a single color in a bag. Repeat for each color, in the end you will have 5 bags

— each with just one color of Skittles. This means you should have one plastic bag with 60 orange Skittles, one bag with 60 yellow Skittles, one

with 60 green Skittles, one with 60 red Skittles, and one with 60 purple Skittles. Gather together a pack of 2-4 volunteer "predators." This can be

anybody who likes to eat M&M's: a friend, brother, sister, mom, dad, grandparent, etc. Explain the rules of the game to your predators as

follows: The volunteers should pretend to be M&M's birds. They should make a "beak" using their pointer finger and thumb for collecting

M&M's candies. You will set a timer (or watch a stopwatch) for 20 seconds. During those 20 seconds, the volunteers will use their beak to quickly

pick up M&M's and quickly put them in their other hand. To encourage the volunteers to be fast, tell them that when they are done with the

experiment, they can eat the same number of candies as they picked up. (But they should not eat any candies until you are all done testing. The

volunteers should avoid picking up any Skittles candies because Skittles make the M&M's birds sick. The Skittles represent the habitat that the

M&M's candies live in. After explaining the rules, pour one prepared bag of Skittles into a metal pie tin or sturdy plate. Mix in the prepared bag

of M&M's. Put the paper plate in the middle of your group of M&M's birds. Make sure everyone can reach the paper plate. Set your timer for 20

seconds. Say, Go! and start the timer. When the timer beeps, everyone should stop picking up M&M's. Count the number of each M&M's color

that each person collected. Record the numbers in a data table in your design notebook, like Table 1. If any volunteer collected any Skittles, put

the number of Skittles they collected in the bottom row of their column, the one labeled "Skittles." Also, re-emphasize that Skittles make the

M&M's birds sick and should be avoided. Make sure to record the data for the correct habitat. For example, if you used orange Skittles as the

habitat, record your data in the columns that say "Orange Skittles" at the top.

Table 1

Habitat

Orange Skittles Yellow Skittles Green Skittles Red Skittles Purple Skittles

Candies

Collecte

d

Voluntee

r 1

Voluntee

r 2

Voluntee

r 3, etc.

Vol.

1

Vol.

2, etc.

Vol.

1

Vol.

2, etc.

Vol.

1

Vol.

2, etc.

Vol.

1

Vol.

2, etc.

Yellow

M&M's

Blue

M&M's

Green

M&M's

Brown

M&M's

Red

M&M's

Orange

M&M's

Skittles

Once you are done counting the candies, put the M&M's back in the bag you prepared them in. This includes the M&M's that people picked, as

well as the M&M's that were still in the metal tin. Your bag should now be like you prepared it in step 1. Take away the Skittles you used for the

habitat (by pouring them off the pie tin). Repeat steps 5-10 for all of the other prepared bags of Skittles until you have tested each Skittles

habitat. When you are all done testing, you can let the volunteers eat the candies if they want to. They can eat the same number of candies as

they picked up, if you want to do it that way. Add up the total number of each M&M's color that the volunteers picked for each Skittles habitat.

Record your data in a data table in your lab notebook like Table 2.

Table 2

Habitat

Candies

Collected

Orange

Skittles

Yellow

Skittles

Green

Skittles

Red

Skittles

Purple

Skittles

Yellow

M&M's

Blue

M&M's

Green

M&M's

Brown

M&M's

Red

M&M's

Orange

M&M's

Skittles

12:30-1 Lunch

1-2 Block 4:

PURPOSE: This hour is dedicated to continue understanding the concept of animal survival.

● Continuation of M & M Survival: Using the numbers from your data table that is like Table 2, make a bar graph of how many of

each color M&M's was picked for each Skittles habitat.

You can make a graph by hand or use a website like Kids’ Zone (https://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/CreateAGraph/default.aspx) to

make a graph on the computer and print it.

Put each habitat's name on the x-axis (the horizontal axis going across), such as "Green Skittles," "Purple Skittles," etc. Put the

number of each M&M's color collected on the y-axis (the vertical axis going up and down). Make a bar for each M&M's color

(and any Skittles collected).

■ Tip: Each Skittles habitat labeled on the x-axis should have seven bars for it, one for each of the six M&M's

colors and one for any Skittles collected.

■ If you want, you can make a separate graph for each Skittles habitat. If you do this you should end up with five

graphs, one for each Skittles color.

Look at your graph(s) and analyze your results.

○ Do you notice any interesting patterns between the color of the Skittles habitat and the color of the M&M's that were picked?

○ Hint: What is different about the blue M&M's? What about the brown M&M's and the purple Skittles?

○ How do you think this same survival strategy would work in the wild?

● Coolest Ways that Animals Adapt to their Environment: Have the students review adaptations by displaying the following YouTube

video. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_YD0XU0TNU) After viewing the video, have the students pair with a partner and express

which animal was the coolest animal adaptation in their opinion.

2-2:30 Go outside and let the kids have free play.

2:30-3:30 Block 5

PURPOSE: During this hour, students will experiment with an animal adaptation.

● Arctic Animals Staying Warm: Begin the lesson with a fun fact. Polar bears and penguins may be seem to live together, but they live on

opposite sides of the Earth. Polar bears only live in the Arctic (North Pole) and penguins live in the Antarctic. Let’s discover if a layer of

blubber can really help you stay warm in icy water.

○ Begin by having a bowl of icy water (you may want to have several bowls of icy water for a faster process) and have each child

put their bare hands in the water. You may want to count to see how long they can last (stop at 30 secs). Next, have the children

put on one rubber glove and then put shortening on their gloved hand. You may use quite a bit. Then wrap it in plastic wrap.

After, have the children take their wrapped hand and place it back into the icy water.

○ Once they have experimented how arctic animals keep warm, have the students explain the differences with the bare hands and

blubbered hand. What did they feel after their hand was wrapped? You may write their responses on the whiteboard or chart

paper, if you would like.

3:30-4pm Read aloud What if I had Animal Hair? By Sandra Markle

● While reading ask the following questions,

○ How long does it take for the polar bear to grow its new coat?

○ Why do reindeers trap their own hair?

○ Why is the musk ox coat compared to a suit of armor?

○ What is special about the star-nosed mole coat?

4-5 Block 6

PURPOSE: This hour is dedicated to illustrate and reflect on an animal adaptation, specifically animal hair.

● Animal Hair Self-Portrait- Students will create a self portrait using construction paper, crayons, markers, pencils, etc. to illustrate

themselves along with one type of animal hair. Students will explain on the back by writing what if they had animal hair and what it will

do to protect them in the wild. Here is a list of suggested animals from today’s reading: Star-nosed mole, Porcupine, Giant Pangolin,

Arctic Fox, Three-Toed Sloth, Zebra, Lion, Oryx, Musk Ox, Reindeer, and Polar Bear.

○ Students may share once completed with a partner or whole class.