Summary

This unit reinforces all of the content information that students learned at Hidden Villa, very clearly supporting Hidden Villa's goal to introduce students to basic ecological concepts and the interdependence of all life.

Authentic science learning includes hands-on learning and direct observations. Unfortunately, bringing a large array of mini-habitats with all of their animal inhabitants into the classroom is impractical for most teachers. However, at Hidden Villa students have the opportunity to explore a variety of different mini-habitats and see with their own eyes where exactly animals live, how they interact with their environment and how different levels of ecosystems are nested within each other. These nature experiences can provide students the information, inspiration and excitement to fuel a deeper study of ecosystems within the classroom. I particularly enjoy giving students a chance to demonstrate their knowledge artistically in this poster project. In the upper grades writing is often the major focus in all content areas, limiting the participation, success and enjoyment of those students whose strengths lie in different areas. It is also true that basic artistic skills are also valued in many scientific fields in which scientists need to make diagrams or sketches of what they are studying.

Part I: Preparation

If you plan to use your Hidden Villa field trip in your life science study, you will probably want to introduce the concept before you go. Also, be sure to inform the Hidden Villa staff that you would like to focus on this topic during the field trip before your trip.The following are some activities that can be used on their own or as part of your regular science curriculum. Versions of several of these activities can be found in other environmental education programs.

Lesson 1: Habitat Theater Game

Lesson 2: Habitat Population Game

Lesson 3: Birds and Beaks Adaptation

Part II: Hidden Villa Habitat Posters - Preparation

Let Hidden Villa know well before your field trip that you plan to focus on mini-habitats and animal adaptations. This way Hidden Villa can help to focus their field trip curriculum on this topic and support students in taking appropriate notes.

Lesson 1: Choosing a Hidden Villa mini-habitat as a poster topic

Lesson 2: Using field trip notes to make an information web

Lesson 3: Selecting groups

Lesson 4: Living and non-living components of mini-habitats

Part III: Hidden Villa Habitat Posters - Research

As an end product, each group will produce a poster that represents their habitat. Included in this poster will be: a clear representation of the non-living elements of the habitat, drawings of between 6 and 10 different animals and 2 to 3 plants that live in this habitat. Below the drawing of their habitat they will include concise captions that give basic information about each animal or plant, including at least 2 adaptations each has to its environment.

Lesson 1: Preparing to research for the mini-habitat poster project

Lesson 2: Mini-lessons on research techniques

Lesson 3: Researching for the mini-habitat poster project

Lesson 4: Using the Internet for research

Part IV: Hidden Villa Habitat Posters - Production

There are many different ways to make the actual poster. After all the academic work, I like to take advantage of this opportunity to push my students to explore their artistic skills. Below I will include the steps I guide my students through in making illustrations of their habitats in the style of renowned artist Eric Carle, who begins with painted pieces of paper from which he then cuts shapes of his animals. As you will note, there are several entry points depending on how involved you would like the project to become.

Lesson 1: Preparing the art for the poster project (optional)

Lesson 2: Creating the poster plan

Lesson 3: Practicing drawing animals

Lesson 4: Creating the plants and animals

Lesson 5: Adding the background

Lesson Plans

Part I: Preparation

Lesson 1: Habitat Theater Game

The aim of this activity is to reinforce the learning that a habitat is the physical space that provides an animal with the food, water and protection that it needs to survive. I also like to use it as a warning that if we don't pay attention to our actions and the actions of others we are likely to quickly lose important wild habitats.

To Play: Your students will stand in a circle with you in the middle. When you point to a student and say "water," "food" or "protection," this student and the students on either side need to quickly make the sign of this word. Before starting the game teach each sign and allow for practice time. For "water" the student in the middle moves both arms up and down while the students on either side open their arms wide to represent the river bank. For "food" the student you point to needs to make the movements of eating from a plate while the students on either side bend down and put their hands out so that they touch to form the imaginary table. For "protection" the student makes a triangle with his arms above his head while the students on either side use their arms to form the imaginary wall. Once you begin playing, if a student makes the wrong movement or doesn't react at all he or she is "out" and declared "lost habitat." The game is over when only a few students are left.

Lesson 2: Habitat Population Game

The aim of this game is to again reinforce the concept of habitat as well understand that there is relationship between the health of the habitat and a species population size. Invent small hand gestures that can represent food, water and protection and teach them to your students.

Explain: You will place your students in two opposing lines. One line will represent the habitat and the other a community of rabbits. Before each round the student in each line will turn their backs towards the other line. The students in the habitat line each need to decide if they are going to represent food, water or protection and make the corresponding hand gesture. The rabbits need to decide what they most need from their habitat to survive and make the corresponding hand signal. When you yell "start" the two lines quickly turn around so that all can see their hand gesture and the rabbits run as fast as they can to the habitat line and try to find a student representing the resource they need. If the rabbit is successful in getting what it needs to survive it is able to "reproduce" this season and the student representing the habitat now joins the rabbit line. Unsuccessful rabbits die and decompose to form part of that habitat. Obviously it is important that students don't change their hand gestures mid-round. After each round or "season" ask the students in each line to count how many are in their line. Keep track of these numbers through several rounds. When you return to the classroom, guide students in making a line graph (change over time) and discussing the relationship between the availability of habitat and the animal population.

This has become a well-loved standard in the schools in our area. Students get different implements that represent the beak types of different bird species and try to "eat" (pick-up) a range of objects that represent different food types. This is a very powerful activity that clearly demonstrates the concept of animal adaptations. Some ideas for different representations of beaks are: spoons (duck), chopsticks (egret), scissors (hawk), clothespins (sparrow). Different ideas of representation of food: marbles, sponge squares, plastic "worms" hidden under sand, paper clips, washers, or toothpicks. Make a worksheet so that students can easily keep track of their "scientific discoveries" about each type of bill. At the end of the activity show students pictures of different birds and have them infer what bird each type of beak might represent. Then guide a discussion about their observations, discoveries and questions about animal adaptations. You can probably find a more detailed description of this lesson on the Internet.

Part II: Hidden Villa Habitat Posters - Preparation 

Lesson 1: Choosing a Hidden Villa mini-habitat as a poster topic

After the field trip, guide your class in thinking of all the mini-habitats they explored during their field trip. (e.g. under a log or rock, one tree, a pool in the creek, the garden.) I like focusing on the mini-habitats because students can actually observe the entire habitat at once, making the concept easier to understand. You might choose to study one or two mini-habitats you are pretty sure all of your students explored at Hidden Villa, along with some larger habitats (such as the riparian forest, the chaparral or the oak grasslands).

Before: Write the name of 3-5 habitats on a large piece of chart paper. Make 2-3 sets. You may also want to write the instructions on the board ahead of time.

Orientation: Using their Hidden Villa notes, students will work in pairs to add the information they know about each habitat to a class web.

Student Instructions:

1. Read everything that has already been written on the web by students before you.
2. Find information about this subject in your notes.
3. Share this information and what you remember with your partner(s).
4. Think about the following questions:
   • How does this habitat provide the three resources animals need to survive?
   • What animals live in this habitat?
   • What do these animals eat and how do they hunt?
   • What adaptations do these animals have to help them survive in their habitat?
5. Time: You will have 5-8 minutes for each rotation.

Activity: Give each pair 5-8 minutes on each habitat web. Remind them to read over what students before them have written to avoid repeating the same information. After each period either have the students rotate or simply switch the papers.

Before proceeding, the class need to be broken into groups of 2 or 3 students to study an individual habitat. To capitalize on student interest, give them the option of proposing their top two habitat choices and 2 or 3 classmates they would like as project partners. You will probably have two or three groups working on each habitat, depending on how many different Hidden Villa habitats your class chose to study.

Orientation: Ask the class to remember what the components of an ecosystem are. Guide them to remember that it is an interaction between non-living components of an environment with the plants and animals that live there. Explain that they are going to organize the information they have about their assigned habitat in these three categories. Draw an example for a web for one of the habitats - let's say, under a log. The habitat goes in the middle circle with the three categories branching out from it. Prompt students to think about some of the non-living characteristics of this habitat (moist, dark, little holes for bugs to live in, food for decomposers, protection from predators) and write them on the web.Then have them think of animals that live there. Around each animal's name, see if they can add some more information about this animal. Explain that students will use the class notes and their own knowledge to fill in the webs for their habitats.

Groups: You may want groups to make their web on a large piece of paper so that all can participate at once, or on separate photocopied worksheets where they can document their group decisions. Give each habitat group one set of class notes about their habitat from the previous activities. Later in the activity, you can have groups studying the same habitat switch class notes in case they have different information.

Part III: Hidden Villa Habitat Posters - Research 

Lesson 1: Preparing to research for the mini-habitat poster project

Orientation: Explain the poster project to your class. Ask them what pieces of information they think they should include in their captions about each animal and plant. To facilitate the speed and efficiency of students' research, prepare a note-taking sheet that reminds students of all the information they have to find for each organism, with a space next to each item for recording information. This could include: where exactly the animal lives; 2 special adaptations of the animal's body that helps it survive; what the animals eats; and who eats the animal. At the bottom of the note-taking sheet, leave a box open for students' own questions.

Group: Each group should first decide on the animals they are going to study. Then they should start filling in the note-taking sheet for each animal. The blanks left on their note-taking sheet will help them figure out what they will need to be looking for in their research.

During your 2 to 5 days of research, you should begin the lesson with a mini-lesson to teach or review a research technique. Since students should already know exactly what they are looking for, emphasize how to locate specific information.

For example: mini-lessons focusing on how to use the Table of Contents and Index, and on how to skim for information. These mini-lessons could be done as Shared Reading with the class or as a Think-Aloud as you demonstrate your own reading processes. This is an opportunity to reinforce reciprocal teaching (or cooperative reading) steps. In this method students are first taught each step and then take turns leading their group in each of the following informational reading steps: Predict, Read, Connect, Clarify, Quiz, Summarize. For more about this teaching method, see Best Practices is Literacy.

After each mini-lesson, students should get right to work on their own research. During the first two days, encourage students to work together in the groups, all researching the same animal. You could even require them to use the reciprocal teaching steps, which supports their learning the research techniques presented. Once students begin to understand the processes, groups can divvy up the project so that each student has his/her own animal or plant to research. A student who is struggling with reading or having difficulty maintaining focus could remain paired with a partner. Advanced students could take on the challenge of researching more difficult organisms or coaching a struggling classmate. At the end of each research session, each habitat group should get together to share what they accomplished during the work period, re-evaluate what still needs to be done and make a plan for the following work period.

There will probably be some information that students simply cannot find in your school reference books. Once students have had several days to practice their research skills, they may be ready to try a search on the Internet. If your students have not used the Internet much, you may want to do a preliminary lesson on how to recognize links, enter a search word and scroll down a page. If your students are advanced Internet users, you may want to define their task (finding the missing information about their habitat's organisms), provide a few suggestions (use Yahooligans, enter specific key words into Google) and let them practice their research skills on their own.

Part IV: Hidden Villa Habitat Posters - Production 

The other part of producing the final habitat poster is writing and revising the information captions. If your students have used the note-taking guide, they should have all the information they need in an organized format. I like to mix up the two production processes and have my students work on their art one day and their information summaries the next.

Lesson 1: Preparing the art for the poster project (optional)

Teach or review the color wheel with your class. Assign each habitat group a different color (tempera paint) to mix, using primary colors plus white. Also, review lines and texture; encourage students to use paintbrushes, sponge squares, potato slices or other implements to add designs to their color. All of  these are art standards that can be found in the California State Curriculum Framework, you might be able to work with your art teacher (if your school has one) on this project, or at least be justified in your decision to teach it in your classroom.

Orientation: Tell students that illustrating requires as much thought and skill as producing a final draft of writing. Very rarely do we ever write a final draft without first making a plan and writing a rough draft. Explain that the same is true for illustration. The first step in an Eric Carle habitat illustration is for each group to design a plan in pencil. Talk about proportion and perspective. The animals and plants are obviously the most important aspects of the illustration, so students should focus on what attracts the viewer's attention. Even small organisms should be depicted large enough for the observer to notice their structural adaptations to habitat. As this is just a plan, emphasize that the animals do not have to look drawn perfectly - the plan is just to get a general idea of where each element of the illustration will be in relationship to each other.

Group: Give each group about 20 minutes to finish their plan.

Please note: It will be much easier for students to work on the subsequent stages of their illustration if their plan is drawn on the same size paper as their final poster.

Orientation: In this step, student choose which organisms they will illustrate individually and begin to plan how to create this plant or animal out of different shapes. (At the beginning of this lesson, I show my students lots of Eric Carle illustrations, guiding them to notice the different patters of his style and how he cuts out the different shapes constituting each animal from different paper and then glues the pieces together.) Explain that each of the animals or plants needs to be put together with a minimum of 6 different shapes.

Model: Do a demonstration for the class, with a simple animal such as a bird. Talk out loud about your decision to draw an oval for the body, a circle for the head, a triangle for the beak, long rectangles for the legs, and skinny rectangles for the toes. These are all pieces that can be glued together. Of course, then there are the wings and eyes that can be glued on top of the other pieces.

Individual: Students draw the different shapes to make each animal and plan what color paper each shape will be cut from. (1-2 days)

Before: If you are using colored paper that your own students have painted, sort the paper by color into different baskets or boxes at the front of the room to facilitate this step.

Orientation: Students will be cutting out their shapes from different paper and gluing them together to form their animals. Remind students to notice the texture or lines on the paper and choose the orientation that looks the best for that particular animal piece. Also, remind students to be careful with their fingers - glue gets stuck to their hands and picks up dirt, which students can run onto their illustrations.

Individual: Students may want to make a stencil of difficult shapes or simply eye-ball them as they cut directly from the paper. Hand out little envelopes or bags for students to store their pieces in if they don't finish within a day. (1-3 days)

Once students have all of their "Eric Carle" plants and animals glued down onto their poster, they are ready to paint in the background of their habitat. Light watercolor works very well for this purpose. Instruct students how to make a light wash of the color they want to use by adding lots of water to the paint and then test it on a piece of scratch paper before they actually paint it on their poster. Show students how to blot out errors with a little wad of paper towel. These steps should take most students only 10-20 minutes.