1. t The African Adventure Safari By Gail Yoshiko Cousins

2. THE AFRICAN ADVENTURE SAFARI By Gail Yoshiko Cousins

3. Unit Summary The African Adventure of the Safari is quite a fascinating and adventurous place for students to get an exciting and great learning experience on the different types of animals that live there. Each student becomes an expert on one of the animals native to Africa and contributes important information to a safari field guide. Each student investigates the natural history of the animal and learns about the animal’s habitat, ecological niche, interdependence, relative position in a food web, adaptive features and behaviors, and conservation. With their research behind them, each student “becomes” an animal and creates a multimedia presentation written primarily from the animal’s point of view.

4. Curriculum-Framing Questions Essential Questions What is the price of life? Unit Questions If you were an African Animal, which one would you most like to be and Why? What animal do you see yourself similar to in the characteristics? If your animal could speak, how would it describe itself and its life in Africa? Are all animals worth protecting? Content Questions What are the characteristics of African animals? How do the African animals adapt to their environmental surroundings? What do African animals need to survive? How are living things connected to their habitat and in what ways do they need each other to survive? What are the categories of the African Animals? What is conservation? How do the African Animals protect themselves from their prey or predator? What is adaptation, habitat, ecological niche and interdependence of the African animals living in the Safari?

5. AFRICAN ADVENTURE SAFARI This project will help my students develop 21 st century skills by: Collaborating and sharing their ideas with their peers. Analyzing and collecting data about how the living things are connected to their habitat and in what ways do they need each other to survive. They will draw conclusions to answer Unit Questions. Researching indepth information along with showing a multimedia presentation on the African Animals and their Habitat. Communicating with others using a website and publishing software. Articulating thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively through speaking and writing. Demonstrating ability to work effectively with diverse teams. Exercising flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to accomplish a common goal.

6. Gauging Student Needs Assessment Purpose of the Assessment To gather information about what students already know about African Animals and what they wonder about them living in the Safari. What I want to learn from my students? I want to find out what they already know about the Unit Questions and what they know and learned from their Multimedia presentation and journal writing on the African Animals.. How I have tried to promote higher-order thinking? I ask students to brainstorm, generalize, synthesize and draw conclusions in their research and presentation on the African Animals.. How the assessment information helps me and my students plan for upcoming activities in the unit? If students have misconceptions about how to do the research and set up their presentations, I can provide a website storyboard along with a student example presentation/scaffolds. If students have different levels of understanding about the importance of African Animals, I can provide various resources. We will revisit this assessment throughout the unit for students to add their knowledge. What feedback or additional ideas I’d like? I would like help on my assessments given to them. I think I need to elicit more higher-order thinking, but I’m not sure how.

7. Find ways to get my students more engaged and interested in learning the different types of animals in different locations of the world. Have students to be able to do their work in pairs or in groups and share their ideas Find ways to get my students interested in researching and doing multimedia presentations Have my students interested in taking time to write their ideas and thoughts clearly in their journals and put together a thorough project on the African Adventure Safari Learn about different kinds of assistive technology my students and I can use and implement on a daily basis Students will be able to gather and collect information from different websites to build their portfolio Share and collaborate ideas with other teachers My Goals for the Course

8. Goals for My Students To learn how scientists collect and think about data To become more independent learners My students will be able to research on the different websites on the computer efficiently. To be able to write effectively and speak clearly using high frequency words. To be able to gather information each day and put it together as a final project as a Multimedia presentation to the class To understand and remember what they have learned from their project and be able to share it to other classmates

9. Places I could find a classroom in a different climate for my students to work with Ideas for helping students take more responsibility for their own learning Ideas for having the students interested in doing their projects and complete it thoroughly. Ideas for student presentations to the entire class Ideas for having students to be able to critique their classmates presentations REQUEST FOR FEEDBACK