WOW Game Title: Habitat Game
Content Area: Science
TEKS Focus: Adaptations for Survival
Living and Nonliving Things Interact
Physical Education Unit: Locomotor Movements
Grade: 4
Resource: Texas Parks and Wildlife Angler Education Program Guide
Equipment/Materials: Space to move
Set Up: Divide the class into two groups, fish and habitat. Fish group on one side of the room and
habitat group on the other side, scatter formation, facing away from the other group.
Activity:
Each person in both groups will secretly choose an essential component of the habitat – food (hands on
stomach), shelter (clasp hands above head), or oxygen (they flap their gills - place hands on cheeks to
represent gills). On command of “Go Fish” each fish and each habitat component turns to face the
opposite group, continuing to hold their signs clearly. When the fish see the habitat they need, they are
to run (skip, hop, jump, gallop) to it. The fish must hold the sign of what it is looking for until getting
to the habitat component student with the same sign. Each fish that reaches its necessary habitat
component takes the food, water or oxygen component back to the fish side of the line. “Capturing” a
component represents the fish successfully meeting its needs and successfully reproducing as a result.
A fish that fails to find its food, water, or oxygen dies and becomes a part of the habitat. Continue
play for desired amount of time.
Variations:
 Chart the number of fish in each round (represents a year). Watch how the numbers go up and
down.
 Add a fisherman. Teacher tells the fisherman how many fish to catch (Texas law limits the
number of fish caught per day) by tagging “fish” on the shoulder before the fish find a habitat
component.
 Call “Drought”. The lake, river or pond has less water. The Habitat group must move closer
together. Teacher designates 1 or 2 students only to be “oxygen” because there will be less
oxygen in the water because of the drought.
 Algae Bloom. No oxygen students, because the algae takes up all the oxygen.
Review Questions:
Skill focus: How many different locomotor movements did you do today? (run, jump, hop,
skip, gallop, slide, etc.)
Academic focus: What happens in the environment to cause the number of fish to change from
year to year? What happens if there is not enough oxygen in the water for all the fish to
survive?