Activity 1B: One Small Square
Overview
Children create a mural of an aquatic environment, using art supplies to represent living and nonliving things, while practicing descriptive language and explaining their choices. They collaborate in teams, explore textures, colors, and shapes, and share their learning with others.
Focus Questions
- What’s happening in one small square near or in the water?
Enduring Understandings
- Plants and animals can be sorted into groups based on different characteristics.
Engage
10-25 minutes
Introduce the book One Small Square Backyard and notice the border on the cover (See alernative titles in the Materials section that may match your local environment better.) Choose a few pages of the book that best match your local “backyard” to read aloud. Ask the students what they notice inside the border on the cover. Tell students they will be exploring “one small square” of their school yard. Show them a meter of survey tape and a magnifying glass, and model the use of each. Make a square with the survey tape, and tell students this square of space is called a “plot.” You might use classroom materials (legos, beads, pattern blocks) in the square and describe aloud as you look and wonder! Tell students they will have to look very closely in their plot to discover all the things living–both plants and animals.
If needed, have students practice in the classroom using the survey ribbon and defining the “space.” For practice, discuss the details of what is within their spaces, using ordinary classroom items. The goal is to go from looking at the bigger picture of the environment to zeroing in on one small square and to realize that there are many plants and probably animals within that small space.
Explore
20 minutes
Give each student a meter of survey tape, a magnifying glass, toothpick flags, and their science notebook. As a class, walk to an appropriate place that you have selected and have students look for a space they want to explore. Describe boundaries so that you can keep the group of children within eyesight. When each student has found their plot, they define the “one small square” with the survey ribbon. Then they study the plot closely for signs of life and other unique features, marking five things that they find most interesting with toothpick flags. Tell students to place the toothpicks carefully so they do not accidently “pin” or “spear” living plants and animals. After students have examined their one small square of earth and used their five flags, encourage them to record three or more of their discoveries in their science notebook.
Explain
20 minutes
Have your science explorers invite one another to their one small square to view their discoveries and unique features. You may want to have student pairs set up ahead of time for sharing. As children are exploring and sharing, take a tour of each student’s one small square and ask questions to encourage thinking. Document each small square with a camera if feasible.
Back in the classroom, encourage students to pair up and share three or more things they discovered in their one small square. What is similar in both squares? What is different? How are they related?
Elaborate
10-15 minutes
As homework, have students take home a one-meter length of survey tape to do the same assignment in their own backyard. Ask them to bring back documentation of what they found. Post their drawings and writings in the classroom and use them to talk about similarities and differences in backyard environments.
Evaluate
Observe and identify students’ abilities to “see” findings in the one small square and to use their science notebooks to explain what they saw. You may also ask students to reflect on their findings in their notebooks or out loud.
Teacher Needs
Teacher Prep
Investigate school area for outdoor sites, prepare student field materials.
Enlist the help of local naturalists to develop knowledge of plants and animals around the school environment. Prior to taking children outside, preview the area and have ideas about what they can discover. Plants and animals discovered on this walk are not necessarily the aquatic life forms that they will focus on during the remainder of the unit, but this initial activity is important to support observation skills and to begin to understand how plants and animals can be sorted and how they are used by people. Sharing the Joy of Nature with Children by Joseph Cornell has ideas for focus games or initial nature walks.
Materials List
- Science notebooks
- survey tape
- magnifying glasses
- toothpick flags
- Book: One Small Square Backyard
- Large piece of chart paper
- Biologist and Subsistence backpacks
- Sand table
- Items to create classroom centers: shells, photos, puppets, plant and animal models, tubs,etc.
- Science tools, measuring tools, games
- Attitude Checklist
- Freshwater Bingo game boards and cards
- Marine Bingo boards and cards
Student Needs
Prior Knowledge
Prior experience with use of science tools would be helpful, though not necessary.
Vocabulary
aquatic, awareness, boundaries, compare, data, describe details, environment, eye level, ground level, marine biologist, notice, observation, plot, role-play, science notebook, sort, subsistence, weigh, wonder.
Specific names of plants and animals around the school environment.
Standards
Science GLEs Addressed
K-12 Standards A1, A2, C2, G2, G3, G4
Ocean Literacy Principles
- The ocean supports a great diversity of life and ecosystems.