3rd Grade Social Studies
Ms. Denise Hamilton
Wetland Instructional and Activity Lesson Plan
Title: Endangered Means There Is Still Time: How Do We Value Wetlands, And How Are They Valuable To Us?
Instructional Goals: Understanding the importance of wetlands, gaining an awareness of life forms contained in and around wetlands, and appreciating the value and vulnerability of our local (and global) wetlands.
Instructional Purpose: To become better stewards of wetland habitats by becoming informed and more familiar with their fragility and importance.
Grade level: 3
Content: Social Studies
EALRs met by this lesson:
C1.2.1b: Identify the traits of responsible citizenship and explain how they contribute to the democratic ideal.
G3.1.2a: Analyze the different ways people use the environment, identify the consequences of use, and consider possible alternatives.
H2.1.1: Explain how an idea has affected the way people live.
Math3.3/Comm4.3/Rd2.3: Distinguishes between fact and opinion, clarifies points of view, and identifies main message and target audience.
Introduction: KWLH advance organizer will be handed out and K & W sections will be completed by the students covering information about wetlands. It will be explained that the teacher will read the responses over night and make sure the questions are covered before the end of the unit lessons. As a class, we will watch the first three short segments of Wading Through The Wetlands video, and view an email wetland habitat slideshow (30 minutes).
 | Special note to students and teachers: accommodations will be made for learning disabled students and others who need additional accessibility to technology or other educational services; to simplify the process of paperwork, one student will be selected to pass out and collect papers. |
Objectives:
Materials:
A.V. equipment to play introduction video; who-what-where wetland worksheet; KWLH diagrams for teacher to go over and assess if questions have been answered; handout describing characteristics of several different wetlands; large piece of green butcher paper, thick black marker, tape and markers for students; blank ‘Valuing the Habitat’ outlines with prompting examples for each category; FishBone advance organizer with different conditions for each, positive and one negative situations for saving wetlands or expanding industry; colorful computer paper to prepare a wetland slogan; pictures of different wetland’s habitats and various life forms; CD/DVD player and wetland sounds to be played during an activity; overheads of the handouts being discussed and completed; extra activities if need be (wetland word puzzles, animal pictures to color or write descriptions in, descriptive guess who’s, etc.).
Activities:
Objective #1: Students will watch a short video recording and view habitat picture slides (10 minutes). The teacher will facilitate their learning and will also participate as an active learner during discussions, assignments, and activities. Students will complete a worksheet while viewing the media, which will be used during the discussion that will follow. The media and worksheet will enable the students to identify what valuing something means, and how wetlands are valuable to us.
Objective #2: Teacher will facilitate a brain-bubble on a large sheet of green butcher paper. The topic will be an overview of wetland characteristics, on any region and any habitat learned from the video clip and slide pictures (8 minutes). Students will be free to add more ideas if they have spare time after activity #6.
Objective #3-4: Students will partner up in cooperative groups of three or four students and complete the outline handout. This handout will have written explanations and prompting examples for each category on the environment and human’s received benefits from wetlands. One student will read the group’s summary, and comments will be heard after each group’s summary is presented to the class (10 minutes).
Objective #5: Students will partner up same groups and begin to critically think about their two stewardship conditions listed on the FishBone diagrams. The team will write anticipated beneficial and negative consequences for each situation and evaluate the effects of both. Students will select the most beneficial circumstance by their analysis, and it is important to emphasize that there are no winners or losers because every idea is a good idea—because in the end, wetlands win! (10 minutes).
Objective #6: Students will get together will their teams and design a slogan to support their selected wetland condition. Students will have 7 minutes to create their slogan and will work silently on extra worksheets as others finish. Slogans will be taped to the green brain-bubble by turn while they present it to the class (10 minutes total).
Activity #7: Class will participate in a concluding discussion about the entire lesson and finish the L and H sections of the KWLH, and a selected student will collect the KWLH handouts and give them to the teacher for assessment purposes (7 minutes).
Anticipated total lesson and activity time: 85-100 minutes.
Assessment: Teacher will take notes in his or her personal lesson binder during group work for active participation; questions will be asked during the lesson at various times and directed towards various students to check for understanding; assignments will be evaluated for covering the main points of differing wetland habitats and life forms developed from the brain-bubble; the positive condition from the FishBone is chosen and the team conceptualizes the benefits of that situation and is capable of communicating the reasons, also emphasized in the ‘Valuing the Habitat’ outline; students are involved in the concluding discussion and portray what they have learned and how this information will help benefit the environment; a pass or fail grade will be given according the criteria listed above.