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Teaching Science with Kidlit: NGSS Performance Expectation 2-LS4-1, Part 3

2-LS4-1.
Make observations of plants and animals to compare the diversity of life in
different habitats [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on the diversity of living
things in each of a variety of different habitats.]

After
comparing two very different biomes, you can focus on two different examples of
the same biome, such as a swamp and a bog (both wetlands) or a prairie and a
savanna (both grasslands).
 

Catfish Kate and the Sweet Swamp Band by Sarah Weeks

Frog in a Bog John
Himmelman

A
Frog in the Bog by Karma Wilson

Who
Lives in an Alligator Hole? by Anne Rockwell

Big
Night for Salamanders by Sarah Lamstein

A
Day in the Salt March by Kevin Kurtz

Deep in the Swamp by Donna M. Bateman

The Swamp Where Gator
Hides by
Marianne Berkes

Water
Hole Waiting by Jane and Christopher Kurtz

Out
on the Prairie by Donna M. Bateman

The Great Fuzz Frenzy by Susan Stevens Crummel and Janet
Stevens

African Acrostics by Avis Harley

Pinduli by
Janelle Cannon

Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the
Meadow by Joyce Sidman

Activity
1
Guide students as they create an interactive
bulletin board with the title, Where Do
These Wetland Plants and Animals Live? Ask each student to draw, label, and
cut around the edges of two separate pictures—one of a bog plant or animal and
one of a swamp plant or animal. Each student must pick different plants and
animals, focusing on the examples included in Frog in a Bog and Catfish
Kate and the Sweet Swamp Band. Add a one side of a Velcro button to the
back of each picture.

Cover the left side
of the bulletin board with light green (top) and blue (bottom) paper and label
it bog. Cover the right side with dark green (top) and blue (bottom) paper and
label it swamp. Cover a central band of the bulletin board with orange paper
and attach seven pockets made from folded sheets of paper and label them:
Insects, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds, Mammals, Fish, Other. After sorting the
student artwork into the appropriate pockets, stick the other sides of the
Velcro buttons to the bog and swamp areas of the bulletin board. When students
have free time, they can match the plants and animals pictures to the correct
wetland home.

Activity
2
After reviewing the backmatter of Frog in a Bog, encourage students to
make eight-page booklets and then create bog field guides that include a
decorative front cover, a blank back cover, and labeled drawing of a plant and
one animal from each of the following groups: Insects, Amphibians, Reptiles,
Birds, Mammals. When the students are done, they can glue the back cover into
their Wonder Journals.

Activity
3
Haiku poetry has three non-rhyming lines. The first line
has five syllables, the second has seven and the third has five. Invite
students to use information from the “know” lists and their own creative ideas
to write and illustrate haiku poems about the African savanna and the North
American prairie. For example:               

            Primrose and daisies

            Bison roam the wide prairie

            Prairie in summer

            Zebras are thirsty

            Less water in dry season

            Sizzling savanna

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