Conserving the Pantanal

3. Classroom Applications

Conserving the Pantanal
Activity One: Fashion an Animal
Activity Two: Play the Pantanal Animal Game
Activity Three: Focal Observation in your Own Backyard
Activity Four: Oh Giant Anteater!

Activity One: Fashion an Animal

Adapted from: “Fashion a Fish”
Project Wild: An interdisciplinary, supplementary environmental and conservation education program for K-12. Western Regional Environmental Education Council. 1987.

Materials needed:
3 X 5 cards for each adaptation. (Beak or mouth, body shape, coloration, predation, movement)
art paper, and drawing tools

Time: 45 minutes, or one class period

Procedure:
1. Students work in groups of 2 or 3.
2. Teacher and students can choose aquatic or land animal.
3. Each group is given several cards of adaptations.
4. Group discusses the “shape”, design for their animal.
5. Group draws the habitat and places its animal within the environment.
6. Group decides on a name for their newly discovered species.
7. Group, in turn, chooses a speaker who will describe their species and its adaptations.

Examples of information on cards.
You can come up with other variations for adaptations.
Can hide in vegetation
Can climb trees
Can hide in rocks.
Fast moving
Slow moving
Stable in fast moving water
Brightly colored body
Feeds on small prey from above
Feeds on small plants and animals
Feeds on prey it sees above
Surrounds prey
Can grasp a small tree branch
Large body shape
Elongated body shape
Spikes on its body.

Evaluation: Completed drawing and concise explanation of the animal’s adaptations for survival.

Activity Two: Play the Pantanal Animal Game

Adapted from:
Cornell, Joseph, Ocean Animals Clue Game
Playful nature card games about animals and their lives
DAWN Publications, 14618 Tyler Foote Road, Nevada City, CA 95959. (800-545-7475)

Materials:
3 x 5 fact cards
6 facts for five different species of the Pantanal. Each fact is written on a different card. Teacher should have a card for a picture of the animal and an answer sheet with the 6 facts that go along with the specific animal.

Time needed: One class period to play game, about 40 minutes. Additonal class period to conduct the research

Procedure:
1. Assign students in groups of 2 or 3 and assign them an animal to research. Use a list of Pantanal animals to choose from.
Go here for web sites with information on animals of the Pantanal.
2. Students write specific facts on each card for that animal. Coloration, prey, feeding habits, habitat, etc.
3. Students hand in their cards along with a picture of their animal. Teacher approves the facts.
4. Teacher shuffles all the fact cards from only 5 researched animals out to her class. Each student gets about two or three fact cards.
5. Students roam about and try to find other cards that would match their own facts. They discuss what animal it could be. When the group decides it has discovered the animal, they go up to teacher who reviews their facts and informs them if all the facts relate to the animal or if indeed one fact is out-of-place.
6. When all the animals have been identified, discussion takes place. What clues were the most helpful? Should any facts be changed to be made more specific?

Evaluation: Successful completion of the identification of the animals.

Activity three: Focal Observation in your Own Backyard

Lesson adapted from:
Sisson, Edith. Nature with Children of All Ages.
.The Massachusetts Audubon Society. Prentice Hall Press. 1987.

Materials: Clipboard, pencil, survey sheet, field guide/bird list, binoculars (optional), digital watch

Time required: Class period. You can begin with 15 minutes time and increase it as seems reasonable for age and attention of your students.

Procedure:
1. Assign students in groups of two. It is optional whether the students work in a small group or as individuals. Two individuals can observe the same tree.
2. Teacher hands out clipboard with data sheet.
3. Data to be included: Date, Time of Day, location, weather conditions, and what the bird was doing. Observe as much about the bird as possible. Write the time the bird spends in that tree as well.
4. This can be done over a school year with specific trees.
5. As data is collected students can decide how they will tabulate it.
6. Students should begin analyzation of the data and predict what they might find the next week, next month, in a different season.

Evaluation: Completed survey with data recorded and several predictions based on student’s data.

Activity Four: Oh Giant Anteater!

Lesson adapted from:
Oh Deer! Project Wild, an interdisciplinary, supplementary environmental and conservation education program for educators of kindergarten through high school age young people.
Western Regional Environmental Education Council. 1987.

No materials needed, just a class of students for participants.

One class period for activity and discussion. 40 minutes approximately.

Grade level: Elementary

Procedure:
1. Divide students into two lines facing each other.
2. Designate one side as the Giant Anteaters of the Pantanal (or Tapirs, or Anacondas, etc.)
3. Designate the other side as its habitat that provides shelter, food and water which is what any living species needs for survival. Model the following three signs for shelter, food and water. Have the students copy the signs.

The sign for shelter is holding your arms above your head and having the hands meet in a pointed arch.
The sign for food is your hand on your stomach.
The sign for water is your hand with fingers bunched together pointing on your mouth.

4. The Giant Anteater line faces away from its habitat and the habitat line faces away from the Giant Anteaters. Each student on the habitat line decides which of the three needs it will be, either shelter, food or water. Once the decision is made the student can not change.
5. The Giant Anteaters also decide which of the three needs it requires.
6. At a given signal the Giant Anteaters and the habitat lines face each other retaining the visual signs of shelter, food and water.
7. Each Giant Anteaters walks across and motions for the same sign in the habitat line to join it on the Giant Anteater line. If the Giant anteater cannot find someone with the same sign in the habitat line then that anteater "dies" and joins the habitat.
8. Continue in this fashion for several more changes.
9. It should become evident that the habitat "grows" in size when the population of anteaters die off and that if there is an increase in anteater population then the critical use of the habitat increases and the habitat is "overconsumed" and decreases.
10. Discussion should begin upon teacher evaluation of activity success.

Evaluation: Students write a paragraph describing the relationship or balance that exists between the productiveness of a habitat and a species dependent needs.