Ocean Animal Adaptations- Lesson #3 —3rd grade
Lead Teacher: Laura Grabarschick
Group Members:
Ashley Turner
Brandon Kelly
Kristen Shirley
Strategy Used: Synthesizing knowledge to gain higher understanding.
Unit Objectives:
1. Students will be able to expand their knowledge about animal adaptations using animals who live in the ocean.
2. Students will be able to synthesize research into graphic organizers.
3. Students will gain understanding about poetry and the various formats.
4. Students will be able to write poetry by following models
5. Students will be able to collaboratively work together to support, share, and listen to other classmates' works of poetry.
Activity
INTRO
10 minutes
-Activating prior
knowledge and
engage students
for lesson
Procedure: What will you do? Include
steps.
1.
The lead teacher will begin the
lesson by asking the class questions about
what we have learned about adaptations so
far. Some questions will be:
“What is an adaptation?”
“What are some of the animals we have
learned about and what are some of their
adaptations?”
2.
The lead teacher will then tell the
class that we are going to continue to learn
about adaptations, but now we will be
learning about the ocean. The teacher will
ask the students about some of their favorite
animals that live in the ocean.
3.
The lead teacher will then start a
four minute video about the ocean with the
narration done with poetry. Before the video
starts, the teacher will ask the students to
notice things about the video:
Rationale: Why are you
teaching this? How are
you addressing the
students’ needs?
What text reading backs
this up?
Activating background
knowledge:
From Strategies That
Work Chapter 7 page 92
“Although some lessons
emphasize understanding
literature and others focus
on building background
knowledge in a particular
topic or genre, all have a
common purpose: to use
our personal and
collective experience to
construct meaning.”
-asking these questions
and showing them a video
about the ocean will both
foster their background
TEKS Connection
Language Arts:
3.29 Listening and
Speaking/Listening.
Students use comprehension
skills to listen attentively to
others in formal and
informal settings. Students
continue to apply earlier
standards with greater
complexity. Students are
expected to:
(A) listen attentively to
speakers, ask relevant
questions and make
pertinent comments;
Materials Needed
(Give name and author for
books used)
Youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/wa
tch?v=1NW5LXtaK3c
“See if you can identify the different animals
in the video.”
“Pay attention to the facts about the ocean in
the poem and think about how that affects
the animals that live there.”
“Pay attention to how the narration is spoken
and what it reminds you of.”
MODELING
10 minutes
-Model writing
poetry
1. After the video is finished, the lead
teacher will ask questions about the
video and ask what animals the
students noticed, and if they thought
about the narration.
2. Anticipating that the students will
respond with a response about how
the narration rhymed and it was a
poem, the lead teacher will then tell
the students that we are going to be
writing our own poetry today. The
video gave us poetry about the
ocean, and we are going to make
poetry about the animals in it.
3. Here the leader teacher will
introduce that poetry does not have
to rhyme like the poetry in the video.
The teacher will show examples of
knowledge and start to
build the bridge to what
they will learn.
Science:
3(9) Organisms and
environments. The student
knows that organisms have
characteristics that help
them survive and can
describe patterns, cycles,
systems and relationships
within the environments.
The student is expected to:
(a) observe and describe the
physical characteristics of
environments and how they
support populations and
communities within an
ecosystem
Language Arts:
J David Cooper tells us
what we know about
content learning
including: integrating
reading with content
instruction, increase
opportunities for students
to read informational
texts, provide students
with experiences to
scaffolding, keep
strudents actively learning
by helping them focus on
what they are to do
before, during, and after
reading. (page 500-501
from Chapter 9 in
(6) Reading/
Comprehension of
Literary Text/Poetry.
Students understand,
make inferences and draw
conclusions about the
structure and elements of
poetry and provide
evidence from text to
support their
understanding. Students
are expected to describe
the characteristics of
various forms of poetry
and how they create
imagery (e.g., narrative
The Best Book of Sharks by
Claire Llewellyn
Shark fact sheet
Shark thinking map
Various poetry templates:
Acrostic
If I were a ____ poem
Persona poem
Dream poem
Lantern poem
Interactive Acrostic website:
http://www.readwritethink.o
rg/files/resources/interactive
s/acrostic/
different kinds of poems including
acrostics, If I were a ___ poem,
persona poem, and lantern poems.
4. The lead teacher will then model
how to write each of these poems
using sharks. The teacher will bring
a copy of The Best Book of Sharks
by Claire Llewellyn, fact sheets for
each table about sharks, and a
graphic organizer about the shark
facts found in the book to help the
writing. All poems will be a guided
writing process where the teacher is
doing the writing, but the students
are helping provide some of the
information.
-Acrostic poem modeling: The teacher will
use an online site that follows the steps of
making an acrostic poem. This site is an
interactive site that ends with a final result of
a poem written by the user.
-If I were a ____ poem modeling: The
teacher will write a poem on a piece of paper
under the doc cam showing how to use this
format.
-Lantern poem, Person poem: The teacher
will already have poems written in this
format and will show the students how she
wrote the poem and followed the format.
(If time is left over, the teacher will have
extra poems to show the students that they
can choose from.)
5. After the concept appears to be
grasped on the form of the poems,
the lead teacher will tell the groups
that they will be writing their own
poems about animals in the ocean,
and to be sure to include information
about the animals' adaptations.
GUIDED
Literacy: Helping
Children Construct
Meaning)
poetry, lyrical poetry,
humorous poetry, free
verse).
Science:
3(10) Organisms and
environments. The
student knows that
organisms undergo similar
life processes and have
structures that help them
survive within their
environments. The student
is expected to:
(A) explore how
structures and functions
of plants and animals
allow them to survive in a
particular environment;
(B) explore that some
characteristics of
organisms are inherited
such as the number of
limbs on an animal or
flower color and
recognize that some
behaviors are learned in
response to living in a
certain environment such
as animals using tools to
get food
Providing students with
nonfiction books as
Various nonfiction books on
ocean animals: dolphin,
PRACTICE
15 minutes
1.
-Create graphic
organizers to
help draft
individual
poems
2.
3.
4.
5.
All teachers will go to their groups
with their own books about the
animals they have as well as fact
sheets and templates for the different
poetry formats. Each teacher will
have a different ocean animal that
they will research with their group:
Ashley: dolphin
Brandon: octopus
Kristen: jellyfish
Laura: starfish
When all teachers have arrived at the
groups, they will inform the students
about what they have learned using
their books. Using their books, they
will share where they found this
information and how to find more
information about specific facts
using the features in the book. By
sharing this information, the teacher
can encourage the students to find
any extra information they may want
to find for their poems.
The teachers will then ask each
student what kind of poem they want
to write, and show the templates for
each poem to each group member to
help them decide.
Together, the group will brainstorm
about what facts they have are
adaptations by filling in a bubble or
circle map. Creating this graphic
organizer will help the students
narrow down which facts will be
important ones to include in the
poem. The teachers will stress to
them that these poems are to be
about adaptations.
After the thinking maps have been
completed, the teachers and students
resources will help them
determine importance by
referring back to them:
“Titles, headings, framed
text, and captions help
focus readers as they sort
important information
from less important
details.”
(Strategies That Work
page 158)
In Chapter 11 of
Strategies That Work, we
are reminded that
synthesizing is like
working a puzzle. By
synthesizing from book to
thinking map to poem,
students are able to
“arrange multiple
fragments of information
until they see a new
pattern emerge
(McKenzie 1996.)”
page 179
Language Arts:
(17) Writing/Writing
Process. Students use
elements of the writing
process (planning,
drafting, revising, editing,
and publishing) to
compose text. Students
are expected to:
(A) plan a first draft by
selecting a genre
appropriate for conveying
the intended meaning to
an audience and
generating ideas through a
range of strategies (e.g.,
brainstorming, graphic
organizers, logs, journals)
(18) Writing/Literary
Texts. Students write
literary texts to express
their ideas and feelings
about real or imagined
people, events, and ideas.
Students are expected
to:(B) write poems that
convey sensory details
using the conventions of
poetry (e.g., rhyme, meter,
patterns of verse)
(26) Research/
Gathering Sources.
Students determine,
octopus, jellyfish, starfish
Materials to make thinking
maps and poems:
Paper, markers, colored
pencils, etc.
will begin to construct their own
poems using the resources to fill in
the lines.
CLOSURE/
ASSESSMENT
10 minutes
-Jigsaw and
presentations
1. For the closing activity, the groups
will use a jigsaw technique by
sharing their poems with a different
group. The students will be
designated their new groups by
having different colored name tags.
Each group member in the initial
group will have one of four different
colors. Each teacher will be
assigned one of those colors.
2. When the students get into their new
groups, they will each share their
poems with each other. This will
provide all students with an
understanding of each animal
covered during the lesson.
3. The students in each group will pick
one poem to be read aloud to the
locate, and explore the
full range of relevant
sources addressing a
research question and
systematically record the
information they gather.
Students are expected to:
(B) use skimming and
scanning techniques to
identify data by looking at
text features (e.g., bold
print, captions, key words,
italics);
(C) take simple notes and
sort evidence into
provided categories or an
organizer
J. David Cooper also tells
us to “increase
opportunities for
collaborative learning.”
(Page 501 in Literacy:
Helping Children
Construct Meaningi)
Language Arts:
(31) Listening and
Speaking/Teamwork.
Students work
productively with others in
teams. Students continue
to apply earlier standards
with greater complexity.
Students are expected to
participate in teacherand student-led
discussions by posing
and answering questions
with appropriate detail
and by providing
suggestions that build
upon the ideas of others.
whole class.
4. Those four chosen poems will be
read by the student in front of the
class. If the student composed a
more visual poem (i.e. acrostic or
lantern), they will use the document
camera in front of the class. These
sharings will close our lesson.
Social Studies:
(17) Social Studies skills.
The student communicates
effectively in written, oral,
and visual forms. The
student is expected to:
(B) create written and
visual material such as
stories, poems, pictures,
maps, and graphic
organizers to express ideas