Beginning my Galapagos Birds project with my 3rd and 4th graders was very exciting and having just come back from spring break I knew my students were hungry for a new lesson and I was ready to share with them my love for both ecology and art! A few vocabulary words I sprinkled into my lesson were:
Biodiversity: the variety of life in the world or in a particular habitat or ecosystem.
(I would explain this as lots of different types of plants and animals all living in a pretty small area together )
Adaptation: Make (something) suitable for a new use or purpose; modify.
(I would explain this as “Animals or plants changing so that they can be better at getting food and surviving)
Evolution: the process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth.
(I explained this as “Animals changing to get food sources so much that they become a different species)
Though our conversation regarding the Galapagos islands and their significance was not incredibly long I did get the chance to expose my students to terms outside of the art room and have them begin to think of the world around them in their artwork. I found sharing the first half of this video to be very useful for piquing their interest and getting the conversation started around the foundation of this project.
Managing a Multifaceted Project
This project required a multitude of tracers to complete. In my classroom, there are 5 tables and up to 30 students in a given class (sometimes more!) To accommodate I made 3 different body shapes, three different wings, and five beaks that students could choose from. Each table would have its own set of tracers that would come with one of each piece, meaning that in my preparations I was cutting 60 different tracers in preparation for this project.
I experimented with different methods for dispersing the tracers for this project. as well as how to explain to students that we are building a bird piece by piece using the tracers. After two or three classes I was able to see that the most efficient method of dispersing tracers was in increments and moving with my students rather than giving them everything all at once or waiting until the entire class was ready to move on to grab the next set of tracers. It’s this relationship between not wanting to move too fast or too slow that I am working to master in my student teaching.