Saturday, February 4, 2012

Science Notebooking: Animal Adaptations


My students and I had a blast with our animal adaptations unit! The students loved being able to look at pictures, watch videos, and learn facts about real animals that they are interested in. Below are some picutres of how the unit played out in our learning journals.


 Title Page & Table of Contents
 Vocab Sheet 1 & Adaptation Intro Booklet
 Inside Adaptation Booklet
 Camouflage Notes & Questions (Super Teacher Worksheets)
Camouflage Pictures
 Mimicry Notes & Mimicking Animal
 Hibernation Notes & Acrostic Poem
 Hibernation Questions
 Migration Notes & Migration P.O.V. Story
 One of the Migration Question Pages
Adaptation Flipbook & Behavioral Adaptation Sort
 Adaptation Definition, Example, and Picture
 Physical & Behavioral
 Bottom Tier of Flipbook
 Vocabulary Book & Vocab Sheet 2
 Inside Vocabulary Book
 We did A LOT with vocabulary in this unit. There were 20+ words the students had to learn!
 Predator/Prey & Producer, Consumer, Decomposer Sort
I gave them sentences on a separate sheet of paper and they had to sort the items into the correct category for each.
 Carnivore, Herbivore, Omnivore Sort
 Food Chain Pictures
1. Food Chain with Arrow  2. Shows each animal inside their predator
 Food Chain Picture & Question Strip
 Population/Community Notes
 Habitat Notes

I learn so much about notebooking from every unit. From this unit I learned that I want to give them less worksheets and pages to glue in (partly because gluesticks have become like gold in my classroom...I don't know how they go so quickly!). Students did well and showed more creativity when I had them take and illustrate their own notes. I still give them direction, but I have learned that they do well with the freedom. Ex. After learning about Terrestrial, "Write yourself a note that will remind you about what terrestrial means, make sure to include the word "land" somewhere in your note."


I would love to hear any thoughts or ideas!

1 comment:

Melissa said...

That's an impressive unit! Dod you make it yourself?