Animal Homes

Erica Blessing Preschool

Common Core Standards: Cognition and General Knowledge, Cognitive Skills, Symbolic Thought, Demonstrate understanding that symbols carry meaning and use symbols to represent thinking. Cognition and General Knowledge, Algebra, Group and Categorize, Sort and classify objects by one or more attributes. Cognition and General Knowledge, Measurements and Data, Data Analysis, collect data by categories to answer simple questions. Cognition and General Knowledge, Life Science, Exploration of Living Things, identify and explore relationships between living things and their environments.

Lesson Summary: This lesson is going to involve the children researching different animal habitats. The children will create a chart that has different animal homes on it using pictures they find on the internet. This will be for a class of 8 to 10 preschoolers ages 3 to 5. This will be a classroom with two teachers. Estimated Duration: This will be done in 3 days with 65 minutes each day spent on this subject matter. This will come to a total of 195 minutes for the three days.

Commentary: My approach will be to let the children participate in what they want because it is against my philosophy to make children do activities that they want. To help the children want to participate I will do two projects that I think that will interest the children. I will hook the children in by reading an engaging book.

Instructional Procedures:

Day 1: At group time, the teacher will ask the class what they know about animal homes. The teacher will use a KWL chart to chart what the children know, what they want to know and will save it for then end so they can say what the learned. The KWL chart will be done on a smart board. This will take 10 minutes. Next, the teacher will read the book Who has these Feet? By: Laura Hulbert While reading the children will guess what the animal is. The teacher will also ask questions like Where does this animal live? How does this animal move? Who has these feet? What animals dont have feet? What animals do have feet? How many feet does a polar bear have? This will get the conversation going on different animals and the book talks about where the animals live so it is a way to get the children engaged. This will take 5 minutes. The teacher will then tell the children that 1-2 children at a time can look up images on the computer of different animals. The teacher will then give the children time to look up pictures of animals to then sort into different habitats. Each child will get 5 minutes for a total of 50 minutes. The rest of the children at this time will be involved in free choice. The teacher will save the pictures and print them off at another time. Day 2: The teacher will play a short Go Animate video on the iPad that they made that talks about a couple of different animal habitats. The teacher will then open up a discussion for the children to come up with animal habitats. The teacher will make a list so they will be able to sort the pictures of animals that the teacher has printed. This will take 15 minutes. During free choice, the children will use scissors to cut out the pictures of animals. It will be up to the children if they want to participate in this free choice option. The children will also have the option to go on a nature walk with one of the teachers to look for animal homes like birds nests. The children will also collect materials they think could be used to make a birds nest. This will be a 50-minute free choice period. The teacher going on the nature walk will take 2 groups and will take 10-minute walks with each group. Then spend the remaining 3o minutes in the room. Day 3: In group the teacher will tell the children how they are going to sort the animals and then glue them onto paper that says what habitat they are from. The teacher will also give the children the opportunity to make a birds nest out of play dough and the materials found on the walk. This will take 5 minutes. The children will then go to free choice and will have the opportunity if they choose to make a birds nest or sort and glue the animals on to their habitat. One teacher will help the children with the animal habitats while the other helps the other children around the room. This will be during a 50 minute free choice period. At the end of the day, the class will meet to talk about the animal homes chart and will fill out the last part of the KWL chart. This will take 10 minutes.

Pre-Assessment: The teacher will ask the children what they know at group time and will write it down on a KWL chart.

Scoring Guidelines: The teacher will judge where the children are at by what they say they know about animal homes. The teacher will modify the lesson as the class goes depending on how fast or slow the children are picking up the material. Post-Assessment: The teacher will judge by what the children say they have learned about animal homes on the KWL chart. Scoring Guidelines: There will not be a grade since grades are not appropriate for this level. The teacher will write observations of what the children say during the process and put them in the childs portfolio.

Differentiated Instructional Support Describe how instruction can be differentiated (changed or altered) to meet the needs of gifted or accelerated students: Discuss additional activities you could do to meet the needs of students who might be struggling with the material:

Extension http://pbskids.org/wildkratts/creaturepedia/ This website has videos that the children can watch about different animals and where they live. A PBS site is designed for young children. The children would benefit from this site because they would be able to hear about different animals and in much more detail than what time would allow in class. The parent would need to be with the child in case the child needs help.

Homework Options and Home Connections I would encourage parents to go on walks with their children to see what kind of animals they can find. I would also encourage parents to go online to look at different animal homes and discuss with their child.

Interdisciplinary Connections Approaches towards Learning, Creativity, Innovation and Invention, use imagination and creativity to interact with objects and materials. Language and Literacy, Writing, Writing Application and Composition, participate in shared research and

writing projects using a variety of resources to gather information or to answer a question.

Materials and Resources:

For teachers

Smart board, printer, computer, I pad, Who has These Feet?

For students

Computer, scissors, paper, glue, pictures, play dough, found nature materials,

Key Vocabulary Habitat, jungle, farm, desert, ocean, nest, forest, pond and pet

Additional Notes