General Information Project Overview Curriculum Connections Resource Connections Evaluation

  General Information

  Project Overview

This project on Rain Forests is designed to reacquaint the grade two students and to introduce the grade one class to knowledge, an appreciation of the plight of some of the world's rainforests.

Last year students in grade one completed a theme on rainforests, but there was so much more to learn that students are enthusiastic about returning to this theme using a multi curriculum approach.

  Curriculum Connections

Main Curriculum Areas:

This project will enable teachers involved to cover objectives in:

1. Science
2. Social Studies
3. Geography
4. Language Arts
5. Art

Project Rain Forests fits in with one of our school's improvement goals to increase scientific study.

School Curriculum Plan:

The proposed project will:

1. Integrate several instructional areas in one theme.
2. Allow students to use individual abilities obtaining information from the Internet.
3. Enable students to help plan the work to be done on this theme.
4. Allow children to learn from each other more readily because of the technology used.

Intended Learning Outcomes:

Students will obtain or have the opportunity to:

1. A clear idea of what a rain forest is, and where they are located.
2. Knowledge about the various layers of plant life in a rain forest.
3. Describe how each rain forest layer is interdependent and provides a home for various forms of life.
4. Use units of metric measurement to compare sizes in the rain forest to sizes of object in their own environment.
5. Knowledge about animals living in the rain forests and problems they are experiencing.
6. Knowledge about people living in the rain forests in the past and present.
7. Information about the importance of rain forests to man and other inhabitants of our planet.
8. Write and draw creatively using information about rain forests.
9. Develop an appreciation for different cultures.
10. Make some educated predictions about the future of our rain forests.

  Resource Connections

Current information including maps, graphs, etc., will be available to individual studies or small groups of students on this topic via the STELLAR Schools Project.

Other Resources:

1. Information books from various libraries or individuals.
2. Primary Networks Reading Program.
3. Current magazines and news papers.
4. Science texts.
5. Interested science teachers from other schools.

  Evaluation

Learning Outcomes:

1. Students will be able to locate and describe some of the world's rain forests.
2. Students will know some of the reasons why rain forests are unique and beneficial to the world.
3. Students will learn about the various inhabitants of rain forests.
4. Students will learn about the problems many of our rain forests are experiencing.
5. Read and write stories about rain forests.
6. Formulate theories re: the future of rain forests.
7. Share information with other students about rain forests.

Impact:

This will be for the most part, the students first experience with the Internet. Hopefully this will be a motivating experience for young children learning about some of the fascinating aspects of rain forest life. Several instructional areas will overlap as the classes obtain knowledge in Math, Science, Language Arts and Social Studies.