Teacher Name: Gemma Griffin
Grade Level: 1st grade
Subject: Science
Time Frame: 60 min.
Concept: Habitats
Topic: Pond Life
Rationale: In order to appreciate and understand the natural world, students need direct experiences and conduct with it.
Goals: To introduce students to the word “habitat”.
To introduce students to plants and animals commonly found in ponds.
SOL’s: Science
1.1 The student will conduct investigations, communicate orally and with simple graphs, pictures, and written statements.
3.5 The student will investigate and understand that environments support a diversity of plants and animals.
Objectives: The student will be able to identify a number of inhabitants of a pond during a nature scavenger hunt to an actual pond site, evidenced by pictorial representation of findings, and a class graph.
Advanced Organizer:
What’s in the Pond? by Anne Hunter
Well written, with very attractive color drawings and endpapers, these introductions give brief descriptions of the physical features and behavior of each animal. Their small size and informative content will make them useful for nature field trips with young children. Both titles contain 10 double-page spreads with text on the left and an illustration on the right, each featuring a different creature. The first page frames the question asked in the title, and the last page gives general information about the particular habitat. Pond looks at a variety of insects, a bluegill (sunfish), red-winged blackbird, painted turtle, frog, tadpole, and muskrat. Log features insects and other arthropods, a garter snake, red eft (salamander), and chipmunk. Useful, appealing additions to nature collections
Materials:
old clothes
paper/crayons
pond
chart paper
stamps or cut outs of animals/plants found at the pond
What’s in the Pond? by Anne Hunter
Procedures & Activities:
1. Ask students what they think they would see if they sat at the edge of a pond and looked in and around?
Record/draw pictures on a piece of chart paper of students ideas.
2. Explain to students they are going to be going on a nature hunt down by the pond. They should draw pictures of different types of animals and plants they see, and any other visual observations they wish to make. Students in their pictures should identify whether the item was found on land of in the water.
3. Before going to the pond, explain safety procedures. Use flags to mark off the parameter of where they may explore, as well as explain that no one is to get INTO the pond. Have students bring old clothes to change into before going to the pond.
4. At the pond assist students in making observations and questioning them about the kinds of things they see.
5. Back in the classroom after the field trip to the pond, have students share what they found at the pond. Record on a chart divided into two columns, things found in the pond, and out of the water.
6. Have students as a class create a simple picture graph using cut outs or stamps of things found at the pond, graphing and comparing the number of items found in and out of the water.
Closure:
Have students complete their pond pictures and color them, then on a sentence strip write a sentence to go with their picture to be hung in the hallway.
Assessment/Evaluation:
Informal assessment based on pictures, class discussion and bar graph:
Were the students able to identify plants and animals found both in and out of the pond?