Creating Lifelong Learners

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.

Sandra Bacall, teacher and singer, created this film with her classroom about a song they wrote together for the City Wildlife Unit. At the end of the song, students talk about the songwriting process and compare it to the traditional writing process.

Using music appeals to students’ different learning modalities and increases engagement.

My favorite one-stop shop for opening this unit is Cornell University’s Urban Bird Studies web site.  All resources are free though they request a donation if they send you materials.

This site has films you can watch with your students and asks students to be urban bird watchers in their own community and submit data online about what they find. Imagine how much more meaningful this unit would be if students are actively involved in the scientific community as data collectors on the topic you are studying.

I would inform them of this role as part of the unit opener and ask them to get started by taking careful notes on one of the films from their web site.

Here are some other unit opener ideas for the City Wildlife Unit.