Day: April 18, 2019

Life Hunt Project — Animalia in B.C.

Okay, new project!

We want to learn something new about animals that can be found in B.C. I am challenging you to look for animals you don’t know ANYTHING about. Do something new! Look on our taxonomy chart at the phylums under ANIMALIA. What kinds of cool organisms could you do?

We will not do fungi and plants yet, though. More on that as we get going to the watershed, okay?

Want to do a search of B.C. animals? The B.C. Government maintains a great, searchable list. You can specify whether you want to find animals, plants, or ecosystems. Check out the list here. You can tell it if you want to see endangered, red list, blue list, endemic, native, or other species. I think it would be interesting to do something that is ENDEMIC to B.C. Don’t know what that means? Look it up, as we discussed it in class!

Once you have decided on an animal, tell me. I would like each person to do something different. Some people signed up for one today on the board. Don’t worry, there are lots of possibilities!

Then, you will need to research the following about the animal:

  • Common and Latin names
  • Taxonomy Chart
  • Habitat and Ecosystem where you would find it — describe it and give location
  • Food Chain for the organism
  • Adaptations
  • Interesting Facts, including how the animal may have been used or represented in First Nations stories
  • Pictures of the animal

After you have research, then we will be using the art of Sue Coccia as an inspiration and creating animal art of our own. You will find out the general shape outline of your organism and fill a page with it. Inside the shape you will place other images that communicate the information you have found above about the organism. I have samples of Sue’s art in class, you can search up images of her art online, and there are more here.

Notes need to be taken just like we would take independent project notes. You need to record resources as you go along. You may use online or book resources. There are many in our classroom you can look at!

Criteria for success? Show you understand the terms we have been talking about in class when referring to ecosystems, biomes, etc. by using them in your research and then including information in your drawings. Ensure you have included information from all the bullet points above. Be able to explain each image you include in your art, using researched information. We will make a formal rubric in class together.

By the way, if you are stuck on the drawing part, you can also print pictures and use their outline — ask me in class.

I look forward to finding out cool facts about the amazing animals that are found on our coast and that make up the important biodiversity of our world. Maybe you will find inspiration at UBC during our field trip!

MACC Update from Ms. D on April 18th!

Hello Everyone!

So, we have had a great three weeks since Spring Break ended!

We have been doing a lot of talking about biodiversity!

If you missed it today, here are two videos you need to see about biodiversity:

What Does Biodiversity Do for Us?

and

Why is Biodiversity So Important?

Here’s a quick summary of some of the great work we have been doing!:

  • We have a LOAD of great books in the classroom to read about biodiversity, biomes, ecosystems, fossils, evolution, animals, birds, and nature! Thank you to the District Library for adding to our collection. Check them out!
  • We learned all about taxonomy and have spent time classifying or grouping animals, making careful observations, and talking about animal or plant characteristics and adaptations!
  • We have been doing the walking curriculum, looking at our surrounding flora and fauna, practicing careful observation, and getting great exercise and fresh air outdoors!
  • We have learned that our playground has blackberry bushes newly seeded behind the portable, small plants called plantains that can be used for medicine, roly polys or wood bugs (that are crustaceans, not bugs), parsley, brown ants, and more. We look forward to continuing our efforts to map the flora and fauna here, as we talk about mapping this unit!
  • We went through almost 100 poetry books and anthologies to seek different literary devices and poetry structure, such as alliteration, assonance, consonance, repetition, metaphor, simile, quatrain, and more.
  • We played a card game called PHYLO that helps us to learn about our local B.C. biodiversity, and we are working on a tough venn diagram puzzle about taxonomy. Some of those puzzles are hard and open to some debate! 
  • We discussed shapes we found in nature and talked about characteristics of 3D shapes. We built shapes out of bristol board, identified angle types, and learned to use protractors to measure angles in our classroom. 
  • We are doing math challenges from Area Mazes, using our understanding of how to find area to determine missing numbers in the puzzles! The lower number puzzles are fairly easy, but only one person has figured out puzzle #97. Keep trying!
  • And we are applying grade level math curriculum to Animal Math, which is a set of problems designed to illustrate math we would use in talking about the animal world (area, perimeter, charts, graphs, financial literacy, coordinates, triangles, algebraic expressions, and variables. 
  • And we are reading The Skeleton Tree by Iain Lawrence, practicing making careful connections, recording new vocabulary, and asking questions as we read, as we strengthen our reading comprehension skills. It is fun reading as a whole group so we can stop and ask questions about this exciting tale of survival on the Alaskan/B.C. coast.

I am looking forward to our field trip to the UBC Biodiversity Museum and Pacific Museum of Earth Science on Tuesday, April 23rd.

Also coming up are a visit to the GVRD Lower Seymour Watershed on May 8th, as well as a visit to our classroom from the O.W.L. rescue organization on May 9th. We will get to see an owl and a hawk up close! FYI, there will be a fee of $8 associated with the visit, with a notice to follow directly after on May 9th, and the money goes toward the upkeep and care of rescue birds at their organization.

We will continue our WALK 30 and Walking Curriculum Challenge through May 10th! Keep counting those minutes at home!

Also, everyone needs to go to the public library for their independent project! I am collecting books in the classroom for most of you. Many thanks to Ms. Ho, our school librarian, for helping us to gather resources from secondary schools and other elementary libraries, and to the District Library for resources, too! All of those books stay in the classroom. Go the library and talk to your local research librarian to ask for help finding even more information. Regular time for research will be given during the week.

More on Twitter, so please do check for daily pictures and updates there!

Stay tuned for the next blog post on our animal project!

Ms. D