For Teachers
For teachers who use e-books in your classroom and would like a free copy of the children's chapter book, Samantha Loses the Box Turtle, please send a request via my facebook page. Include your name, school's name, what grade you teach, and an email address and I would be happy to send you a digital copy of Samantha Loses the Box Turtle to use with your students.
Samantha Loses the Box Turtle is a children's chapter book targeting early elementary students. It is a fun story that is both enjoyable and educational. To continue the learning in your classroom here is a lesson plan taken from a scene in the story:
Food Web Classroom Exercise
(As demonstrated in the children’s chapter book Samantha Loses the Box Turtle)
Discuss:
- All living things are connected.
- What are some things we need in order to survive
- Shelter, Water, Food
- What are some things we eat? If possible have some visuals ready, show a hamburger, lettuce, carrots, apples, etc.
- What are things animals eat? What do plants eat?
- Depending on the level of students this would be a good time to discuss the difference between carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores. Also how plants get energy from the sun and pass that energy to the herbivores who then pass it to the carnivores.
Activity:
- Give each of the children a card with a picture of a living thing on it face down. Cards should encompass a wide variety of plants and animals. Carnivores, omnivores, herbivores, fish, birds, mammals, trees, flowers, mushrooms, etc, etc.
- If you already have a deck of cards like this use it, otherwise you can simply print out pictures from google on card-stock.
- Tell the children not to look at their card until it is their turn.
- Hold up illustration animal.
- This can be a live animal, which generally grabs the attention of the children better, or a stuffed animal. Also, if the children take well to the activity you can have more than one animal or plants and repeat the exercise multiple times.
- Be sure to research beforehand whichever animal you are showing and it’s position in the food web. Be familiar with what it eats, what it will not eat, and what eats it.
- Choose a child to start with. Have him show his card to the other students. Then let him hold the illustration animal and try to decide how he thinks the illustration animal fits into the food web with what is on the card.
- Would the animal eat what is shown on the card, would it be eaten by it, or neither.
- If the answer is neither you might ask children how what is on the card is still important to the illustration animal. Then guide discussion to show that every living thing is connected somehow. For example, even though a lion never eats grass, grass is still important for a lion. If there were no grass then the plant eaters that the lion does eat would die and therefore the lion would die.