Introduction        

This lesson was developed by SUNY Cortland students in EDU 314 and EDU 373.  After reading the book Wolf Journal by Brian A. Connolly, we decided to create a lesson on it.  This lesson is based around information from chapters 12 through 16 in Wolf Journal.  The lesson is intended to guide the students on their own tracking adventure like ones they read about in the book.  Students will be able to learn what real animal tracks look like and use this information to go tracking. 

Learners

            This lesson is designed for sixth grade students with a language arts and science base.  This lesson could easily be extended to seventh graders and possibly to fifth graders.  More or less teacher help may be needed depending upon the grade. 

            Before starting the lesson, students will have needed to read Wolf Journal through chapter16.  Students will need the knowledge in the book to understand how animals can be tracked.  They will also need to understand the value of tracking and how it can help humans.  This lesson could probably be conducted without reading the book but the students would need to know these basic facts about animal tracking. 

Standards

 This lesson was designed to support the New York State Education Standards including: 

 Science Education Standards

The Living Environment (intermediate)

Students will understand and apply scientific concepts, principles, and theories pertaining to the physical setting and living environment and recognize the historical development of ideas in science.  

5. Organisms maintain a dynamic equilibrium that sustains life. 
-compare the way a variety of living specimens carry out basic functions and maintain dynamic equilibrium.

6. Plants and animals depend on each other and their physical environment.

7. Human decisions and activities have had a profound impact on the physical and living environment. 
-describe how living things, including humans, depend upon the living and nonliving environment for their survival.
-describe the effects of environmental changes on humans and other populations. 
           

English Language Arts Standards

    Standard 1 - Intermediate
Listening and Reading
-Distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information and between fact and opinion
-Relate new information to prior knowledge and experience
-Compare and synthesize information from different sources
 Speaking and Writing
-Produce oral and written reports on topics related to all school subjects
-Use Standard English for formal presentation of information, selecting appropriate grammatical constructions and vocabulary, using a variety of sentence structures, and observing the rules of punctuation, capitalization and spelling.

                Standard 2 – Intermediate
Listening and Reading
-Read and view texts and performances from a wide range of authors, subjects, and genres

Process

            This lesson is intended to be completed after the students have read chapters 12 through 16 of Wolf Journal by Brian A. Connolly.  The lesson should take about one hour period.  The lesson involves both English language arts with reading and writing as well as Science involved in the knowledge of wolves and tracking them and other animals. 

            The students will be divided into groups of three or four.  The students will perform their own research and then track different animals.  The teacher needs to be prepared to set up a “trail” for the students to use and track the animals.  This could be done in a classroom, hallway, or gym depending on the space that is available. 

 Variations
            This lesson could also be done so that the students research different animals and then create their own trails based on what they learn.  They could then guide their classmates through the trail. 

Resources Needed

This lesson will require:

            -A copy of Wolf Journal by Brian A. Connolly for each student

-Internet access for each group

            -Pictures of different animals, plants, and animal tracks

            -A large enough space for the trail to be made

One teacher is fine for the lesson.  The teacher may want to confer with the physical education teacher or the principal to make use of a gym space or hallway. 

Evaluation

After the lesson has been completed, the teacher will look at the information the students have found on each animal and the questions they have completed about relating their tracking experience to the book.  The students will show their understanding of how humans are able to track animals and what importance tracking has.  They will use written statements to show that they have read the chapters assigned and understand how they relate to lesson.  Each student will receive a copy of the rubric. 

Conclusion

            After completing this lesson, the students will better understand how animals leave signs that can be tracked by humans.  They will be able to make a connection to the book and in turn better relate to the information in the book.  The students better understand how animals, humans, and the environment are all related. 

Resources Used

http://www.bear-tracker.com/guide.html

http://www.princeton.edu/~oa/nature/tracking.shtml

Credits

Created by students in EDU 375 and EDU 314

Based on Wolf Journal by Brian A. Connolly

Created from a template on The WebQuest Page