Animal Safari Hunt

A WebQuery for 3rd Grade

Jackie Hawkins
Hawkinsja@cwu.edu

Introduction

Today we are going on a Safari hunt. You are a Safari guide in Africa and it is your job to find an animal in the jungle that someone hasn't heard of and explain to the people on the Safari with you why this animal is so awesome and what important characteristics it has that separates it from all the other animals in the jungle.

Task

Your task is to create a mini-report book. The front cover of your book needs to be some sort of artwork you have created to show off your interesting animal. You can paint your animal, draw it, make it out of paper then glue it on, or any other way you think of to show off your animal, the choice is yours. There is no set length to your report book, but you must be able to tell the class enough information so they can truly know what characteristics your animal has that sets it apart from all of the other animals in the rainforest.

You can use books you find in our classroom, books from the library, or you will be given time to look for information about your animal online as well.

The Process

Here are some questions to ask yourself while doing your project...

*What part of Africa is your animal from?
*What kind of animal is it?
*Is your animal on the endangered species list?
*What kind of food does your animal eat?
*What does your animal look like?
*Where in the jungle does your animal live?
*What type of home does your animal live in?
*Do you have enough information in your mini-report book for everyone to really understand how cool your animal is?
*Where can you look to find out more or different information than you have already found about your animal?

Resources

Here are some websites to find information for your report book. You may use other sites for information as well. We also have great resources in our school library and in our classroom library for you to use. If you need help finding information ask me and I'll be happy to help.

http://africa.mrdonn.org/animals.html On this website you can find animals from Africa that may interest you for your report. There are links to give you information about the animals you may want to learn more about.
http://www.askkids.com/web?q=Endangered+Animals+in+Africa&qsrc=6&o=0&l=dir This website gives you links to many different websites that have information on the endangered animals in Africa.
http://www.kidsplanet.org/factsheets/map.html This website gives you fact sheets about some of the animals you might find in Africa. This would be a good place to get some of the information about your animal.
http://www.africanfauna.com/ This website would be a good place to start looking for the animal you would like to research. You can click on a letter in the alphabet and up pops the names of the African animals that fall under that category. Once you click on the animal's name it gives you a big page full of information about that animal.
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/AfricanSavanna/afsavfact.cfm On this site you can find just about everything you would want to know about some of the animals of Africa. It gives you a large page full of information on certain animals.

Evaluation

AFRICAN ANIMALS RUBRIC

CATEGORY	4	3	2	1
Grammar	Zero to one grammatical errors.	Two to three grammatical errors.	Four to five grammatical errors.	More than 6 grammatical errors.
Information	There were at least ten facts about their animal that helped the class to understand a variety of characteristics the animal had.	There were eight facts about their animal that helped the class to understand that type of animal.	There were only five facts about their animal.	There was less than five facts about the animal.
Cover Page	The cover page was colorful and creative and showed off their animal.	The cover page did not use many colors, but still was creative and showed off their animal.	The cover page didn't look very presentable. It didn't show off the animal very well and had little color.	There was no effort put into the cover page or the cover page was missing or blank.
Presentation	The student was able to share with the class the information from their report books. Their presentation gave the class lots of information about their animal.	The student was able to share with the class the information from their book reports, but didn't give all of the information.	The student was able to share with the class about their animal, but only shared a few facts.	The student wasn't able to share with the class or only shared one fact.

Date Created: June 01, 2009

Conclusion

Now that you are an expert on one interesting animal from the jungle in Africa, see if you could do some more exploring about a different animal. You could add on to your report book and have a whole jungle full of African animals to share with everyone in there.

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