Young scientists explore the animal kingdom from the safety of the classroom with this short research project. After first choosing an animal, children use the Internet to discover where it lives, what it eats, and how it has adapted to survive, before compiling their findings in a multimedia presentation.

Concepts

Research, the internet, researching animals, animals, ecosystems

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Additional Tags

animal adaptation, research project, multimedia presentation, internet research, animal research, ecosystem, science

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Instructional Ideas

• Adjust the research and presentation requirements to fit the abilities of your students
• Break the project up across three days: one for research, one for creating presentations, and one for sharing presentations with the class
• Create a note-taking guide to support children with researching their animals

Classroom Considerations

• Prior to implementing this lesson, be sure students have been taught how to perform research using the Internet and are familiar with creating presentations using Powerpoint or other software

Pros

• Resource is available as a Word document that can be edited by teachers to meet the needs of their class
• Provides clear expectations for the type of information students should include in their presentations
• Includes a sample presentation to use as a model when explaining the project to the class

Cons

• Requires additional scaffolding to support students with completing the different phases of the project

Common Core

W.3.7 W.4.7 W.5.7 SL.3.4 SL.3.5 SL.4.4 SL.4.5 SL.5.4 SL.5.5