Aquatic Habitats
Overview
Students identify specific traits of a habitat. They start with a familiar local habitat and then focus on aquatic habitats.
Focus Questions
- What lives in the water?
Enduring Understandings
- Living things have certain characteristics that help them survive.
- Living things need food, water, oxygen and shelter to survive.
- Science is a way to help us answer questions about the world around us.
Engagement
10 minutes
Play the Mystery Animal Game: Give the students clues about an aquatic animal but do not tell the students that it is aquatic. Clues might include what type of shelter the animal lives in, what it eats, and some of its behaviors. Ask students to guess what animal is being described.
Who Am I?
Example 1:
Clue #1: I live in different places during different times of my life.
Clue #2: I look very different when I am born than when I am grown.
Clue #3: I like to eat bugs when I am grown.
Clue #4: I can make a loud noise.
Answer: Frog
Example 2:
Clue #1: I can make a loud noise with my tail when I am frightened.
Clue #2: I make my home of mud and sticks.
Clue #3: I can cut down a tree with my sharp teeth.
Clue #4: I have dark brown fur and large webbed feet.
Answer: Beaver
Example 3:
Clue #1: I live where it is cold most of the year.
Clue #2: I like to eat clams as well as seals.
Clue #3: I can grow to weigh more than a ton!
Clue #4: I have two tusks.
Answer: Walrus
Clues and animals can be derived from the Alaska Wildlife Notebook Series.
Ask students to guess what animal is being described. Write each animal on the board as it is successfully identified. Ask students to determine what all the animals have in common (they live in or near the water).
Exploration
25 minutes
- Display posters and books of aquatic habitats throughout the room and invite students to explore and talk among themselves for about 5 minutes, about the varied aquatic life forms.
- Clear tables and make poster boards and magazines available to small groups of students. Have students work in groups to locate, cut, and paste pictures of aquatic animals to create a poster of animals that live in the water.
- Monitor the groups and listen for questions that students ask as they work. Record these questions on chart paper.
Explanation
10 minutes
- Allow students to share and compare their posters with other groups. Encourage them to ask questions of the other groups to support and show evidence for their choice of animals in the poster.
- Record questions that arise from the discussion on the chart started in the exploration part of the lesson.
- Record facts that students profess to know on a separate chart.
- Ask students, in their groups, to use their science notebook entries from the nature walk, and discuss what is the same and what is different about the animals they drew in their notebooks and the animals they chose for their posters.
- One student from each group will report the similarities and differences the group noticed about the animals.
Elaboration
5-30 minutes
- Ask students to complete the sentences on the Compare and Contrast Response chart in their science notebooks.
- Students can graph the variety of animals displayed on their class posters.
Evaluation
Assess small groups on their completion of a poster that displays aquatic animals.
Assess individual students on their notebook entry using the Compare and Contrast Response chart.
Provide pictures of aquatic animals from the Animal Mystery Game and ask students to glue a picture in their science notebooks. Tell them to draw an appropriate habitat for that animal and label the animal’s food source and shelter.
Teacher Needs
Teacher Prep
- Determine nature walk location
- Prepare science notebooks for students
- Collect jars of water from a pond, stream, lake, river, or the ocean.
- Label the jars
- Prepare Animal Riddles
- Collect nature magazines with pictures of aquatic habitats that students can cut out
- Collect pictures, posters, and books of aquatic habitats and animals
Materials List
- Science notebooks
- Compare and Contrast Response Chart
- Chart paper
- Clean jars with lids
- Water from local aquatic habitat
- Magnifying lenses
- Eyedroppers
- Small clean surfaces for observing water drops (glass slides, small plastic lids, etc.)
- Thermometers
- Rulers and/or other measuring tools
- O-W-L chart on overhead, board, or chart paper
- Books and posters of aquatic habitats and animals
- Poster board
- Scissors
- Glue
- Nature magazines for cutting out pictures of aquatic animals
Student Needs
Prior Knowledge
Students should know the difference between living and nonliving things, and have experience sorting plants and animals into different groups. They should also understand that animals, including humans, live in homes, and that each place has plants and animals that can survive there.
A mini-lesson on the use of scientific tools would be helpful. It could include: how to use a magnifier or loupe, how to use a thermometer, using measuring tools, how to use an eyedropper, how to take care of tools, where to put them when finished.
Vocabulary
Aquatic habitat, Evidence, Habitat, Shelter, Algae, Microbe, Microscopic
Standards
Science GLEs Addressed
-
1st and 2nd grade standards: A1, C3, G3, G4
-
3rd grade GLEs: [3] SA1.1, [3] SA1.2, [3] SA3.1, [3] SC3.1, [3] SC3.2, [3] SG2.1, [3] SG4.1
[bws_pdfprint display=’pdf’]