Week One

Schedule
One 45-minute experience in a park, two to three 45-minute classroom lessons, and one full-day guided field trip

Goals
Students will begin to analyze the questions: What is a biome? What is topography? What are the different types of biomes? Where are these biomes located? How are they similar and different? What does the landscape and topography of these biomes look like?

Procedures
As the year begins, students explore with natural materials in an outdoor environment, such as a park. Students formally initiate this study by taking a field trip with a guided tour to the New York Botanical Garden. This way, students directly experience six specific biomes: Temperate Forest, Wetland, Rainforest (Lowland and Upland), and Desert (African and North American). Upon returning to the classroom, students are divided into groups of 3 or 4 so that each group studies one of these biomes in depth, builds that biome in Integrated Art, and later shares their learning with the whole class. Students also read and take notes on teacher-created informational texts and books about each biome.

Assessment
Formal: Teacher review of note-taking sheets, including homework reflection on field trip experience.
Informal: Asking children individually and in whole group about learnings, discoveries, and questions about their biome.

Suggestions for Teachers

• Carefully consider how you make groups of students, as this is a six-week project that requires much flexibility and collaboration.
• Make sure children have prior experience reading and note-taking with informational texts, including organizational and print features such as indexes and glossaries.
• Provide different options for accessing the written materials, such as teacher reads aloud to small groups, reading alone, reading in pairs, or independent reading.
• During group meeting, have children share fun facts they have learned about their biome, and teachers can keep a running list that develops throughout the study.

Schedule
One hour with classroom, art, and student or volunteer teachers

Goals
While students think about what people need to survive in their biome, they create an aerial view of their biome. During construction, students make associations with materials in the natural world to use in their model. While designing, students think about topography, and consider elevation and proportion of water and land features.

Materials
Homosote board 4 ft x 4 ft, vine charcoal, clay, brown paper bags, soil, sand, sawdust, green paper pulp, rocks, blue tissue paper, blue paint, newspaper, and glue.

Procedure

Motivating Questions (Full Group Discussion, 10 minutes)

• If you can imagine an aerial view of your biome, what would you see? (Teachers, chart a list: water, soil, mountains, caves, trees, others)
• What are the most important elements from this list that you can find specifically in your life zone? Why? (Teachers, have students share, gaining ideas and knowledge about each other’s biomes.) What parts of your land are flat and what parts are elevated?

Visualization and Work Time (15 minutes)
Your group is going to make a model of your assigned biome on the homosote. I would like for all of you to start by drawing on the board where all of these (point to the list) important land components will be, and include a safe, logical place for your house to be. (Teachers can act out the planning with the other teachers, taking turns, listening, and compromising.) We will be making houses next week. Once your group has completed the planning sketch, we will regroup to talk about which materials we will use for the topography.

Introduction of Materials (Full group discussion after completion of sketching, 5 minutes, then work time, 30 minutes)
Looking at all of these materials: How will you create elevation on your land? What materials will you use? (Allow children to share and demonstrate using clay, stuffing paper bags for mountains, or crumpling paper.) Make sure your group begins with the three-dimensional components of the biome. What material will you use for grass? Sand? Water? How will you make it all stay in place? (Allow children to share and demonstrate.) You have the remaining 30 minutes to build your biome.

Assessment

Informal: Observing children’s conversations, choices and model-building decisions.

Suggestions for teachers

• Provide vine charcoal for children to draw on the homosote. This material is easier than other drawing tools to manipulate.
• Give one drawing tool per group, so they take turns using it.
• Avoid large groups. Three children seems to work well.
• Have students stand up while working; put chairs away.
• Assign an adult to each group for the duration of the model building. This adult will be their mediator and role model during the whole process. We have found that this helps manage conflicts and progress by having assigned teachers. This also makes it easier for teachers to observe, record, and assess.
• Provide a large sheet of brown paper under each model. The materials are messy but it is easy to recycle the brown paper.
• Provide one place in the room for all materials to be displayed.
• Provide one tray to each group for them to collect and take to their work station.
• Provide buckets of water for children to rinse their hands so that lumps of materials do not clog the sink.
• It is suggested to first do some dramatic modeling among teachers to demonstrate behavior in taking turns and drawing.
• While working with materials, 30 minutes is typically enough.
• Assign clean-up jobs to members of each group.

• Wetlands (pdf)
• Tropical Rainforests (pdf)
• Temperate Forests (pdf)
• Deserts (pdf)
• Biomes Note Sheet (pdf)
• NY Botanical Garden Field Trip Sheet (pdf)
• Atlas exploration (pdf)