Having completed the City Wildlife unit for the first time, these are my thoughts on what the unit is about and how I would approach teaching it next time.
Students already know a little bit about animals. They’ve had the animal unit and the camouflage unit prior to coming to third grade. But this is not just an animals unit…The trick here is in categorizing animals as living in the city or not and talking about the unique challenges that city animals face versus animals living elsewhere.
Graphic organizers which categorize animals by habitat would be helpful (perhaps a tree map) and organizers that compare and contrast living in the city or in rural areas (like a Venn Diagram or Double Bubble) would be helpful.
We are wrapping up the City Wildlife unit also. I really enjoyed participating in the video conference with your school. We focused at looking at insects and plants as City Wildlife also. Surprisingly this unit gives ample opportunities for explore these concepts. We used graphic organizers “Thinking Maps” to understand concepts in each of the stories. We also used a Venn Diagram “Double Bubble Map” to compare and contrast City Wildlife animals and pets as a Unit Concept.
Thanks again for conferencing with us.