Interactive Rainforest Animals

This lesson is a project that I am currently doing as a part of an interdisciplinary concert called Beyond The Rainforest.

Students will first select a research using internet and traditional resources, a rainforest animal of their choice. They will study its habitat, survival strategies, and basic life facts and create a small "first person" essay describing the animal in detail.

Then, students create a working puppet of their rainforest animal, with parental help if chosen (I believe it is so important for parents and children to get to work together on projects like this). The puppet is completed and students use the puppets to read their first person essay.

The final piece of the project involves chromakey video. Students will operate their puppet infront of a blue or green painted screen and the puppet will be reading the first person essay. Behind the animal, will be images that correspond best with their animal as found on open image databanks such as pics4learning.com. Using my personal camcorder and laptop, I edit the videos, and then they are put on our webpage and also placed on a dvd for viewing on the big screen at our concert performance.

Students view each others rainforest puppet videos and then will do a post assessment to gauge student learnings and understandings.