Rachel Farmer

Living Lens Project

 

For this project our driving question was “How can we design educational materials to teach children about aquatic species?” My class’s species was the Black Footed Penguin from Africa.  My group and I decided that our book should not be anthropomorphized which means having a lot of human characteristics for example Winnie the Pooh is anthropomorphic because he does a lot of human things such a sleeping in a bed, talking, wearing clothes etc. which is something a typical bear from a forest would not do.

 

                The process of this project was very research oriented at first.  Our first step was to find reliable sources, write down facts from the sources on different notecards depending on what category they would go in (Anatomy, Heredity, Food and Environment).  After we got the facts on each notecard we had to cite the source in APA Citation at the top.  After we did this we were assigned our group.  When my group and I were assigned to each other we first started talking about how we wanted our book, what we wanted our main focus to be and then we began creating an outline for our storybook.  Then we began drafting our storybook.  Any facts used in our story was cited at the end.

 

                I grew in Biology through because I learned A LOT about African penguins that I never knew before, I never even knew before the project that penguins live in Africa!  That was something really mind blowing for me.  I also learned a lot about how an African penguin lives, I thought that they stayed in the same place all year but they move around depending on the time of year such as when it’s mating season they have to go find a mate and then go make a nest.  Something I though was really interesting was how a penguin cools itself off is by panting and there is also rings around their eyes that turn a darker pink which means they’re overheating.  Knowing these facts really helped a lot because I was able to help write a more in depth storybook and it will help me in the future because I learned how I can incorporate new things. 

 

                One artifact I can use is the some of the website links we used to gather information to demonstrate how we first gathered our information and what some of the facts were.  It also shows how much we learned about the penguin and what we thought was important to know about them.

 

                Another artifact I can use is the final draft of my group’s book (Does not include illustrations) because it shows the facts I learned.  This shows how my group and I incorporated the facts in a creative and interesting way so that kids can enjoy the story and still learn about African Penguins.