Overview of Lesson: The students will be learning about special features of animals and their

habitats through an interactive lesson where the students get to see, touch, and ask questions
about 3 animals from extreme habitats from around the world. The teacher will provide a short
description of the animal and habitat before the students will be allowed to ask questions. The
assessment will involve them picking a habitat in groups and then creating an animal that could
live in that habitat based on the features of animals we learned about in the presentation.
Description of Learner: The students are third graders. They will vary in background and
diversity but have the group they are common. They do not have a strong background in
science but have a love of animals. The students will be recieving the lesson at the Columbian
Park Zoo in Lafayette Indiana in one of our classrooms called the Savannah. We want them to
learn about three different animals, their habitats, and special features of that.
Objective
Given pictures of different animals, students will be able to tell
what kind of animal is in each picture clearly within 1 minute
Given five animals and habitats, students will be able to match the
animals with the habitats correctly with no more than 1 mistake
Using a word processor, students will be able to write down five
different ways to protect the environment of different habitats specifically with no
more than three grammatical mistakes
Standards

2.1.4
2.3.1

Materials

Tropics, etc)

Craft paper,
Markers/ Crayons/ colored pencils
List a habitats (Savanna, desert, Antarctica, Mountains, Forest,
animal/ habitat fact sheets
the three animals
shopping bag/ rack
camera

Opening Activity: The students will be asked to sit in a half circle. They will watch a short video
over penguins and their habitat to start them thinking about what animals need to survive. The
teacher will walk around the students and pass out empty food boxes. As the teacher is walking
around she/he will tell the students to think about the items and what they are holding and to
raise their hand when they think they know. After every student has a different box the teacher
will tell them to tell their neighborhood what they think it is. There will probably be lots of
different answers but the one you want is food. if you do not hear food then try to guide them
to that word.

Discussion: Food is one of three things that all living things need to have in order to
survive. Food is one, but what are the other two? Use guiding questions to get the students to
say water and shelter/habitat. Tell the students to remember those things for later in the class
and to quietly put there food boxes under their chairs.
Core Activity: Ask them to state the three things animals need in their habitats again. Bring the
first animal out, Whites Tree Frog, tell the students about how the frog uses water in a special
way. Talk about the water and color of the frog. Ask where they think it lives. Rainforest, what
kind of shelter does it have? Allow questions and touching.
Second Animal: Two-Toed Slow. How much and what do they eat? how does what they eat
affect their habits? They live in the rainforest so where do they get there food/shelter. allow for
questions and touching.
Third Animal: Southern 3 Banded Armadillo. They have a special shelter with their armor like
body. *not a shell like a turtle. Soft belly so they can curl up in a complete ball to protect from
hungry lions in the grasslands. Also have long nails for digging up bugs to eat.
*use given fact sheets for animals and habitats
Closing activity: Have the students get there food boxes back out. Ask them if they think the
food they eat will affect animals in their habitat? Probably be Yess and Nos so have one or two
students explain why they think that. Tell them that the food choices do affect animal habitats
especially the rainforest. Talk about the Gibbon and how companies are tearing down the
rainforest to grow palm oil which is in almost all of our food. This mean the gibbon is losing his
shelter and food and will make it hard to survive. Ask them if they want to help! There are
companies that use sustainable Palm Oil which means they do not cut down the rainforest to
grow it. Tell them to get there food boxes back out and its time to go shopping. Tell all students
with a red sticker on their box to raise it in the air and tell them that is bad palm oil that cuts
down the rainforest. Next say green, and that is good sustainable palm oil that does not hurt the
Gibbons. And lastly is yellow, which means you could make a better choice but it is not terrible.
Now they get to go shopping. Show them the rack at the front of the room and the shopping bag
you are holding. Tell them to come up and choose whether they want to buy the item or put it
back on the shelf it is bad.
End of the Lesson: The students will take a picture with one of the animals and decorate a
foam picture frame to take home. We will put magnets on it so they can hang it up on the
refrigerator.
Assessment
Put students in groups (2 students, 2 mentors)
Designate a habitat for each group and have students create
animal/ use existing animal, to which they apply features that coincide with the
assigned habitat.

Tech
include video(creative commons)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIo1giiTXCs
Credit: Creative Commons; All Things Animal TV
Have students answer questions on
the habitat that the animal lives in, and what kind of physical
features help the animal survive in this environment.
Palm Oil app
Parents help?
2 journal articles (APA)
Craig,L.,Bai-Lian,L.(1996).Habitat Destruction and the Extinction
Debt.Ecological Applications,6(3),784-789.doi:10.2307/2269483
This article pointed out that habitat destruction was the main reason for causing an
extinction debt which was irreversible and devastating.The authors developed three different models to
analyze extinction based on various habitats.They also demonstrated those three models with the
association with habitat conservation.

Laura,R.P.,Karen,E.H.,Anthony,R.E.S.,Justin,S.B.,(2008).Effect of
Habitat Area and Isolation on Fragmented Animal Populations
This article attributed habitat loss and fragmentation to terrestrial biodiversity
crisis.The authors of this article analyzed and synthesized several datas from 89 studies of terrestrial
fauna on 6 continents.They surprisingly found that patch area and isolation were surprisingly poor
predictors of occupancy across species.
Description of what inspired Lesson
One of the Member of our group has previously held a job in a
zoo, where she was able to instruct students/ visitors on animals and where they
live and what they eat, etc. This inspired the idea of teaching students about
animal environments and habitats!