Video Scavenger Hunt: Is It Alive?

Day 1: Using classroom items as examples, students will learn the characteristics of living and nonliving things. The class will work together to create a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting living and nonliving things. Students will begin class lists of living and nonliving things, and will record some items in their interactive science journals. Students will focus on important characteristics of living things: they grow and change; and need air, food and water.

Day 2: Students will go on a video scavenger hunt to find living and nonliving things. Working in pairs or groups of three, students will go outside and use a length of yarn to create a circle in a grassy area. Students will find 5 living and 5 nonliving objects in their circle and will create video clips to show and describe 2 objects in each category. Students will practice their speaking skills and use good science vocabulary to explain why their four items are living or nonliving.

Day 3: Students will download video clips to classroom computers. Students will import videos into Glogster, watch one anothers' clips and determine whether the items are correctly categorized and justified.

Day 4: Students will add writing to their Glogster pages to tell about their scavenger hunt finds. Students will practice skills learned in writer's workshop to make their writing legible to others. Students will invite other 1st grade and kindergarten classes to view their video clips and read their wriitng.

Day 5: To evaluate their understanding, students will create a quiz for a partner with pictures of living and nonliving things, in which their partner has to determine which category each item falls into and tell why.