This lesson was inspired from an idea by Heather Francis. I was having a hard time thinking of how I could teach the students about animals specific to Utah in a fun way. Ms. Jones provided an incredible website that she made with many Utah animals in their respective climates:
I was looking through this website and felt overwhelmed with so much information about all of these animals, so I asked for help and Heather Francis gave me the idea of using a Cinquain Poem to learn about the animals. This type of poem uses lots of verbs and adjectives to describe the subject of the poem, so I decided to assign movement to each of the five lines of the poem and have the students create their performance from there.
It took more preparation since I printed out pictures of 9 of the many Utah animals in the website, 3 from each main climate (desert, wetland, and forest), and then used the information on the website links to write down interesting or important information about that animal on the back of the paper. This way the students would have somewhere to look for more information on the animals to create their poems.
This lesson ended up being one of the best! One thing that really stood out to me was that everyone had to get into partnerships to create their poem, write it on a poster, put movement to it, and then perform their movement as I read their poems. There were two boys that ended up being partners that did not seem like they were going to participate at all and that did not want to work together. But only a couple minutes later, they were running up to me so they could show me what they had created. These boys that were normally very distracted became so focused on their poem and were so eager to perform for the class. It was so fun to see everyone get so creative with their poems and movement and see them perform it for their classmates.
Arts Bridge Utah Animal Lesson
Objective: By the end of 35 minutes, the 4th grade students of Ms. Jones’ class will be able to identify and embody different Utah animals by using Cinquain Poems to describe and perform their characteristics.
Materials:
Tape for map of Utah (optional)
Posters/paper for groups to make their own poems
Writing utensils
Drum
Speaker and music (optional)
Pictures of animals you want to use
Experience and Identify:
Review previous lesson on Utah. Show me where the 3 main climates are (desert, forest, and wetlands)
Can we remember what movement we made to represent each of these climates?
Introduce the animals that we will now be exploring from each of these climates.
Explore and Investigate:
As a class go through and make a poster/poem for a cougar (forest)
Create movement for each line.
Instructions for Cinquain Poem
Line 1: One work subject of the poem (noun)
Line 2: Two words to describe the title (adjectives)
Line 3: Three “ing” words that show action (verbs)
Line 4: Four-word phrase that expresses a feeling
Line 5: One-word synonym for the subject or one word to wrap it all up
Movement Instructions
Line 1: Shape of animal
Line 2: Two shapes
Line 3: Three actions
Line 4: Acting out the phrase
Line 5: Group shape
Create and Perform:
Desert: Desert Tortoise, Rattlesnake, Tarantula
Forest: Cotton Tailed Rabbit, Barn Owl, Black Bear
Wetlands: Mosquito, Duck, American Bullfrog
Get into groups for each animal and make their own poster for that animal and be ready to
perform it for the class. (This ended up being partnerships with each animal, but you could choose to do less animals and have bigger groups depending on the class size.)