By caring for three different animals from three diverse habitats, students develop skills in observing and describing the animals' physical characteristics and behaviors, as well as in answering their own questions through research and exchanging information. Fourth-grade students can be responsible for feeding animals, maintaining their habitats, and ensuring their survival. They are capable of reading and articulating more complex information than younger children, and they are able to develop higher-level scientific reasoning skills, such as identifying cause and effect and supporting conclusions with concrete evidence. Lesson 1 begins with a class brainstorming session. Students share what they know about frogs, crabs, and snails and what they think is important to know about these animals in order for them to survive in the classroom.
Students also discuss the ways they think scientists study animals.
This lesson serves as a pre-unit assessment of students' knowledge about animals' needs and animals' dependence on their habitats. Lesson 2 builds on the discussion of animals' needs that began in Lesson 1. As a result, student groups propose which environmental elements need to go into a habitat for each animal. In Lessons 3 through 6, the class uses its proposals to create a classroom habitat for dwarf African frogs and fiddler crabs and begins to care for the animals outside of their natural habitats. After recording the questions they have about each animal, students establish individual animal logs for recording their observations over time.