Habitats-New+Living+Thing+(2nd+Grade)

Contributing Teacher(s): Shenette Gavi
Resources: *Class set of computers (If a class set is not available then set up a station where the students are allotted 20 minutes to use the computer at a time) *Internet Access *Website: www.buildyourwildself.com *Kidspiration (Should be installed on all elementary computers) (For the mural part any software where the students can create a picture/poster can be used)

0207.1.1 Design a new living thing and explain how it would acquire food, water, and air.
===ISTE Technology: 1. Creativity and Innovation: Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology. Students: create original works as a means of personal or group expression.=== ===2. Communication and Collaboration: Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students: interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media.===

Introduction/Problem:
The essential question the students are concentrating on is that they are an explorer and they have discovered a new living animal. Later on they are going to be creating an animal as an engineering project and building a habitat that suits this animal so it can survive in the zoo. This is just an introductory lesson into habitats to get the students interested and using their imagination.

Procedures:

 * The first part of the lesson is for the students to go to buildyourwildself.com and create a new and crazy animal that is made of all different kinds of animals. This part of the lesson is just fun and gets their imaginations rolling.
 * The next step is to put their animal in a habitat in could survive in. This is where the student will complete a Habitat Mural and explain how the habitat meets the needs of their animal. The students will be working in the classroom in groups using Kidspiration to create a habitat mural that shows their new and wild animal plus three other animals living in the habitat. So each member of the group will have their animal in the mural by the time it is done. The groups will be made based off of their animals needs.
 * Last the student will go into the writing view of Kidspiration and write a sentence or two about their new buildyourwildself animal and the habitat.
 * To end the lesson the teacher will show videos of animals from actual zoos.
 * http://www.honoluluzoo.org/zoo_videos.htm
 * @http://bronxzoo.com/multimedia/videos.aspx
 * @http://www.hoglezoo.org/about/news_media/video

Student Product/Work:
By the end of the lesson the students will have a picture of their new discovered animal using buildyourwildself.com and a mural of the habitat their animal can live in.

Enrichment/Reteaching:media type="custom" key="18639416"
As an enrichment lesson I would have the students do a writing lesson. This could be considered an enrichment activity because their new discovered animal might have more than one feature that could fit in more than one environment and they have to decide which one is the best. In their writing they have to justify why they put their new buildyourwildself animal into the selected habitat. In order to do their writing and decide where there discovery took place they may have to do some research on the Internet as well.

Ex. My name is Shenette and I am an explorer. I have recently traveled to Africa where I have discovered a new and amazing animal. No one has ever seen this animal before so I have come up with a name for it. It's name is. This animal lives in the rivers of Africa because it has tentacles as legs.