I. Curricular Framework

Concept:

Scale

Essential Question:

Why are whales a good subject for the study of scale?

Bridge:

Name That Tail

Content:

Whale Science: Characteristics and Attributes of Whales

Outcomes:

II. Standards Aligned

III. Instruction and Assessment

1. Connect: Connecting to the Concept Experientially

Objective: Students will recognize that living things can be identified by their unique structure and characteristics.

Activity: Students will analyze and match their fingerprint patterns. Materials: Ink pad, index cards cut in half, two small collection boxes, bulletin board area. Procedure: 1) Give each student two index cards and have them use the ink pad to make a copy of the same fingerprint on each card. 2) Students place one of their fingerprint cards in one box, one in another. 3) Choosing at random, mount the fingerprints from one box on the bulletin board and allow each student to examine the fingerprints carefully. 4) Have each student choose a fingerprint from the remaining box. 5) One by one, have the students try to match the fingerprint they have chosen with one of the mounted prints.

Assessment: Participation in activity.

2. Attend: Attending to the Connection

Objective: Students will discuss the matching experience and focus their thinking on the fact that the uniqueness of fingerprint patterns used for human identification is the same key fluke patterns provided for whale identification.

Activity: Bring the group together and ask the students to reflect on how they arrived at their choices for matching of fingerprints. Discuss the pattern-recognition techniques used by students in this activity. Lead into a discussion about how researchers use these same techniques for telling one whale from another. When researchers want to tell one whale from another, they try to look at the whale's fluke or tail. The underside of the humpback's flukes has a black and white pattern that is different on each individual - a kind of natural "name tag" or "fingerprint."

Assessment: Student contribution to group discussion.

Assessment, Phase One, Level of Engagement, Fascination:

3. Image: Creating a Mental Picture

Objective: Students will role-play researchers at by using a whale-naming, cooperative activity -Name That Tail!

Activity: Play Name That Tail game! Divide the class into groups of 5 or 6. Show each group of students examples of whale flukes, discuss how scientists could have arrived at the name given to each whale because of the fluke pattern they observed. Give each student in the group two index cards and ask them to sketch a fluke on one card and create a possible name on the other card. Once everyone in the group is finished, shuffle the fluke cards together. Lay out the name cards so that each member of the group can see the names. Have students take turns drawing from the fluke card stack and trying to match the fluke with the name given by the "scientist" from their group.

Assessment: Ability of students to create flukes, participation in group game.

Assessment, Phase Two, Seeing the Big Picture:

4. Inform: Receiving Facts & Knowledge

Objective: To teach specific information in an interdisciplinary fashion around the topic of whales. The content disciplines with their specific objectives include: Science ñ Students will be able to explain the major classification of whales as well as be able to describe the unique characteristics and behaviors of several species of whales.

Activity: The teacher presents information using lecture, videos, films, music, visuals, discussion, technology, field trips, guest speakers and learning stations as well as allowing time for individual inquiry from the text set of material which has been placed in the classroom.

Assessment: Level of student interest and quality of products completed. Tests, essays and/or journal responses might also be used.

Assessment, Phase Three, Success with Acquiring Knowledge:

5. Practice: Developing Skills

Assessment, Phase Four, Success with Acquiring Skills:

6. Extend: Extending Learning to the Outside World

7. Refine: Refining the Extension

8. Perform: Creative Manifestation of Material Learned

Assessment, Phase Five,Performance, Creative Use of Material Learned: