Animal Alterations: How Do Animals Change Their Habitats?

Learning Resource Type

Lesson Plan

Subject Area

Arts Education

Science

Grade(s)

Overview

Students will begin by describing how humans change their environment in order to provide for their needs. Students will watch a video clip that explains how several forest animals alter their habitats, and then explain how other animals might change their environment in order to survive. At the conclusion of the lesson, students will create a drawing that illustrates how an animal may alter their environment to provide for its needs.

This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

Science (2015) Grade(s): KG

SC15.K.4
Gather evidence to support how plants and animals provide for their needs by altering their environment (e.g., tree roots breaking a sidewalk to provide space, red fox burrowing to create a den to raise young, humans growing gardens for food and building roads for transportation).

Vocabulary

Gather
Evidence
Support
Plant
Animal
Provide
Needs
Alter
Environment
Claim

Knowledge

Students know:

Plants and animals meet their needs.
Plants change their environment to meet their needs.
Animals change their environment to meet their needs.

Skills

Students are able to:

Gather data (evidence) to support a claim that plants and animals alter the environment when meeting their needs.

Understanding

Students understand that:

Systems in the natural and designed world have parts that work together like the plants and animals within their environments.

Scientific and Engineering Practices

Engaging in Argument from Evidence

Crosscutting Concepts

Cause and Effect

AE17.VA.K.1

Primary Learning Objectives

Students will be able to describe how humans and other animals provide for their needs by altering their environment.
Students will be able to create a drawing that illustrates how an animal may alter its habitat to provide for its needs.

Procedures/Activities

Before Strategy/Engage: 10 minutes

1. The teacher should ask students the following questions: "What do you do when you're cold?" "What do you do when you're hungry?" "How are you able to get from your house to school?"

2. The teacher should record student responses on a chart titled "Humans and their Environment". Through effective questioning techniques, the teacher should lead the students to the understanding that we, as humans, provide for our needs by altering our environment.

For example, the teacher asks the students, "What do you do when you're hungry?" The students may reply, "We would eat." The teacher should ask, "Where does your food come from?" Eventually leading the students to the idea that our food that we get from the grocery store comes from a farm that someone created in our environment in order to provide food for people.

During Strategy/Explore & Explain: 15 minutes

1. The teacher should pose the following question to students, "What are some ways that an animal might change their environment to survive?" The teacher may choose to explain that humans are a type of animal, and we change our environment to survive, other animals do too. The teacher should record student responses on a chart entitled, "Animals and their Environment".

2. The teacher should play the following video clip: "Big Changes in the Big Forest" from Crash Course Kids on youtube.com.

3. After viewing the video clip, the teacher should return to the "Animals and their Environment" and add any additional ideas that students learned while watching the video clip. (The animals detailed in the video include prairie dogs, termites, squirrels, and beavers.)

After Strategy/Explain & Elaborate: 30 minutes

1. Explain to students that they will illustrate how an animal alters its environment to provide for its needs. The teacher may ask students to focus on an animal that was discussed during the lesson or allow students to choose another type of animal that was not discussed.

2. The students should be able to create a drawing that includes at least one animal and illustrates how the animal could change its environment to provide for its needs.

For example, a student may illustrate a prairie dog burrowing underground in order to create a safe shelter.

3. Have students present the drawing to the class to explain how the animal in their drawing is changing its habitat and why the animal would need to make that change to provide for its needs.

Assessment Strategies

Formative Assessment: The teacher will informally assess students' understanding of the concept during the class discussion during the before and during strategies

Summative Assessment: The teacher will formally assess students' understanding of the concept by reviewing each student's illustration at the conclusion of the lesson. Each student's illustration should include one animal altering its environment to provide for its needs. The students should be able to verbally explain how the animal in their drawing is changing its habitat and why the animal would need to make that change.

Acceleration

Students who require acceleration strategies could add additional animals to their illustration or include additional ways an animal may alter their environment. The students could research a new animal using age-appropriate text and create a new illustration with that animal.

Intervention

Students who require intervention strategies may draw an animal and its alteration to its environment on a coloring sheet, rather than creating an illustration on blank paper.

"A River in the Forest" Printable Coloring Page

The teacher could allow students to describe their illustration verbally as part of the summative assessment.

Total Duration

31 to 60 Minutes

Background/Preparation

Teacher Background Information: Animals alter their environment in order to provide for their needs. For example, humans began the process of agriculture to provide food and built roads for transportation purposes. Just as humans change the environment to provide for their needs, other organisms alter their habitats as well. For example, a tree's roots may break apart a sidewalk to make room to grow. A red fox burrows into the ground to make a den to raise its young safely. This lesson will focus on the ways that humans and animals change the environment in order to provide for their needs.

Student Background Information: As this lesson is introductory in scope, students will not need background information to complete the lesson's objectives. The students will be required to create a drawing using standard art supplies (crayons, colored pencils, markers, etc.)

Materials and Resources

Student Materials (per student)

White paper (for illustration)

Coloring supplies (colored pencils, crayons, markers, etc.)

Teacher Materials

Chart paper or board

Printable for Intervention Strategy: "A River in the Forest" Printable Coloring Page

Technology Resources Needed

Teacher computer with internet access

Interactive whiteboard and/or projector with ability to project sound

Video clip for during strategy: "Big Changes in the Big Forest" from Crash Course Kids on youtube.com (4:38)

Approved Date

2016-12-28