Learning about animal habitats in first grade is always a fun and exciting activity. Students love learning about different animals and this lesson makes it even more engaging when they get to build their own habitat!
For this lesson, I told my students they would be choosing an animal to research and write about. We've been working on our informational writing all year, and this activity would be a great way for my students to show me all that they have learned.
What Is A Habitat?
To begin, we needed to understand the definition of a habitat and the animals that lived in the different habitats around the world. We watched a couple of short videos on Youtube to help us set the stage.
Next, we worked together to create this anchor chart about animal habitats. We talked about six different habitats and wrote words that described each.
Choosing An Animal To Research
Now that we understood the definition of a habitat, we needed to choose some different animals to learn about that lived in those habitats. I paired my students with a partner and together they chose an animal to read about and research.
We used these non-fiction readers by National Geographic, which are great because they are written for young children and are easy to read and understand.
We also used Epic Books as a research tool. Epic (which is free for teachers) is filled with non fiction books that are just right for young children and they even have some books that will read to them, which are perfect for your struggling readers.
Pre-Writing Activities
Next, they worked together to gather facts about their animal. They used this Animal Habitat flip book to write everything they learned. They drew a picture of their animal, its habitat and they included the three key points to a good habitat: food, water and shelter.
Building Our Animal Habitats
Finally we got to the FUN part, creating the habitats! The students used shoeboxes as their base and had lots of stuff that they could use to create their animal home – tissue paper, construction paper, popsicle sticks, hay, little rocks, fun foam, aluminum foil – you name it, we used it!
By the time we finished, the room was a HOT MESS! But there was some serious learning going on, so it's all good! The students used their books, graphic organizers and our anchor chart to help them decided how to build their habitat.
Our Completed Animal Habitats
Writing Our Reports
The final step was to write their animal report. The students used all the information they had gathered throughout the week to help them and they used this informational writing template for their report.
I love using these templates because they are differentiated for struggling, on level and advanced writers. Each student is able to participate in the project and work on their own level.
I'd say that was a pretty productive week! It was hands on learning and the kids loved it! What do you do in your room to teach about animal habitats? Please share your ideas in the comments.
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