Pond Video

Technology is a huge piece of my teaching set, but I only use it if it supports a targeted goal.  Yesterday we watched this well-done video on animals that live on the edge of a pond.  It is a variety of video clips and photos taken around a pond at Veteran Acres Park in Crystal Lake, in Illinois, mostly during the spring, summer and fall of 2010. 

My first teaching goal was to make sure that my students understood what the word "edge" means.  Without this understanding, they would not be able to make predictions about what they would see in the video.  We decided that "perimeter" is a synonym for edge and "center" is an antonym.

Second, I wanted my students to realize that there are many different kinds of animals that live next to a pond, some of which they probably would not predict, although they do have deep schema for ponds.  We have been classifying animals (birds, insects, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, spiders, fish) and so I wanted to tie in their predictions with our animals classifications. Next, we made a list of animals that we anticipated would be the stars of the video - animals that live on the edge of the pond.

Finally, we watched the video twice and had a discussion about what we saw. Because there is a sunfish in the video, a discussion ensued about whether or not the sunfish should have been included in the video, since it is a fish and it probably swims in other places in addition to the edge of a pond.  

We also noticed that we did not include any of the multiple birds that were wading in the pond in our list, nor did we include many of the birds that were living near the pond in nests.  The discussion highlighted the importance of thinking about all seven of the different classifications of animals when predicting which animals would live in a specific habitat. 

They really are amazing first grade scientists!  Good for them.