Activity 3D: Our Book about Things in the Water
Overview
Students will create a mini-book where they learn describe the feel of living and nonliving things in water by using textures and descriptive words. They work in pairs to create pages for a class book, matching materials to textures like rough, smooth, or soft, and explain their choices.
Focus Question
- How can you describe the characteristics of this living or nonliving thing?
Enduring Understandings
- Living and nonliving things in Alaska waters come in a great assortment of colors, shapes, and sizes.
- Living things move, grow, and change.
Engage
10 minutes
Pass an object around the group, and ask children to describe how it feels. Use their words to model describing sea creatures or other aquatic living or nonliving things. Use objects from the local area such as rocks, shells, bark, sticks, feathers, leaves, etc.
For example, to describe a scallop shell: “Bumpy,” “smooth,” “sharp edges.”
Ask the children “What kinds of materials could we use to show that in a book?”
Paper, fabric, and other materials will be used to create a class book that supports children’s use of descriptive words.
Explore
30-40 minutes
Students will work in pairs to create a page for the class book. Using photos, magazine cutouts, or drawings of local living and nonliving things, children then describe how the thing would feel. They choose a material with an authentic texture.
For example, cardboard = bumpy (shell or a sea creature), sea star = sandpaper, bird = feathers, fish = scaly fabric.
Each pair will use a page that already has words printed on it, taken from the previous lesson. Students can then read the words and add their drawing and texture. Brainstorm additional textures for living and nonliving things, including lots of repetition.
Pages for the class book can be as follows:
Page 1: You can learn by looking.
Page 2: You can learn by touching.
Page 3. The sea star looks rough.
Page 4. This feels rough.
Page 5. The ______looks smooth. (shell) ?
Page 6. This feels smooth.
Page 7. The ______looks hard. (rock) ?
Page 8. This feels hard.
Page 9. The ______ looks bumpy. (barnacles) ?
Page 10. This feels bumpy.
Page 11. The _____looks soft. (feather) ?
Page 12. This feels soft.
Last page: Can you remember the way each thing feels?
Explain
20 minutes
As students work together on their page, they talk with each other about how they will use materials to show and demonstrate the texture. When the whole class reads the book together, each team will be able to explain their thinking to the group. If someone disagrees with the material they used, the teacher supports the team to defend their thinking.
Elaborate
When students have finished their pages, they can make their own small book or an additional page for the class book.
Evaluate
Note the ways students are able to work together, learn from one another, and show their understanding on the class book page. Also note the students’ ability to talk about their work and identify how they knew about their chosen item on the page (past experiences, books, film, television, etc.).
Teacher Needs
Teacher Prep
Prepare puzzles
Print the photos and description of the pseudoscorpion. Print the small picture.
Compile resources and materials.
Print, copy and fold mini-books.
Prepare class book pages with the words printed out.
Cut, sort and organize textured materials.
Gather, prepare, and organize art materials for murals.
Materials List
- Tagboard or construction paper for puzzles
- Larval to adult marine puzzles
- Larval to adult freshwater puzzles
- Science notebooks
- Resource books, posters, pictures, ID charts, films
- Objects from aquatic environments (shells, rocks, etc.)
- Picture and description of pseudoscorpion
- One mini-book per student
- “Class Book” pages with words printed on them
- A wide variety materials with texture; cloth, plastic, thread, yarn, etc.
- Glue or glue sticks
- Magazines for cutting
- Art materials: large sheets of paper, tempera paints, construction paper, newspaper, paper fasteners (brads), toothpicks, paper bags, markers, wire, and other materials. Children may have ideas of materials to use.
Student Needs
Prior Knowledge
Information from previous lessons with plankton and microscopic creatures. Experience with animals such as class pets, and with a variety of living and nonliving things in the aquatic environment. Experience with glue or glue sticks.
Vocabulary
aquatic, balance, body, bristles, change, claws, color, develop, environment, feel, grow, jaws, legs, living, look, move, mural, oval, non-living, phytoplankton, pincers, segments, shape, size, texture, zooplankton
Related Lessons
Standards
Science GLEs Addressed
- A2, C2, C3
Ocean Literacy Principles
- The ocean supports a great diversity of life and ecosystems.