Curriculum Standard: 3rd grade Social Studies

5.) Integrate, connect and apply social studies into other subject areas and everyday life. (G,H, C) b. Compare and contrast various animals and their habitat from different countries.

Big Idea: Relationships between animals in other countries

Preparation:

1. Introduction that elephants can come from both Asia and Africa.
2. Ask students if they have ever seen an elephant? Ask students to describe what it looked like.
3. In whole group use KWL chart and discuss items the students know and want to know about elephants.
4. Read the book "Endangered Elephants", making sure to stop at specific pages on each elephant. List what students learned at the end
5. Discuss the features and characteristics of the Asian and African elephant.
6. As a whole group go through National Geographic for kids and navigate through the African elephant page.I would also use a interactive site like Africam.com to show real world examples.
7. In small groups the teacher will assign a specific country and the students are to discover a new animal and prepare informational text to present to the class.

Guidance:

1. Teacher incorporates a KWL chart in the lesson and the book "Endangered Elephants"
2. Teacher discusses the characteristics of two species of elephants.
3. Teacher provides instruction on presenting animals.

Application:

1. Students write about two different animals that they learned about from different presenters.
2. Students turn to the person next to them and talk about the two animals they wrote about.
   
   Assessments:
   1. Teacher will walk around assessing the students informally while they are discussing the two animals they chose to talk about.
   2. Teacher will have a rubric for the presentations. The presentations will be recorded and each student will be able to assess themselves ,as well as the teacher following the guidelines of the rubrics.