The fifth and first graders picked up a lot of ideas from our visit to the Dickerson Park Zoo a few weeks ago and used them to bring our own Summit Zoo to life!
Behind the scenes, students did lots of research on a few animals from their chosen biome. The fifth graders focused on the adaptations that help their animals to survive in their habitat. They also looked into how much space their animal needs to be comfortable in a zoo enclosure. They made a layout for their animals’ enclosures, calculating the dimensions, perimeter, and area of each. After cutting out a scaled down footprint of their enclosure, the first and fifth graders worked together to design dioramas that would make their animals feel at home.
It was so much fun watching these come together! As a final piece to the project, the fifth graders made a chart showing the classification of their animals, demonstrating how closely (and distantly!) related their animals are.
