Getting The Most Out Of Zoo Field Trips

Reprinted from The Wild Times Teacher Connection v1n2, Winter 1996.

Field Trips all too often can be little more than a day out side of the school building for teachers and children. Using the zoo's docents can give some structure to your trip and provide more information for your students. But to get the most out of your next trip to the zoo, make it a part of a larger study of animal behavior or adaptation. Let the zoo become a laboratory, an extension of the classroom, and not an escape from it.

What follows is a description of my current animal adaptation curriculum for my 10 and 11 year old Environmental Science students. The results of their study are posted on Bank Street School for Children's page on The Wild Ones web site.

Pre-unit Planning

Make a pre-trip visit to the zoo you will be using to identify the animals you will allow your students to observe. Choose animals that exhibit the behavioral or physical adaptations you want your students to focus on. For example, tamarins and leaf-cutter ants are examples of social animals; walking sticks are examples of camouflage in response to predation; sea lions are an example of an aquatic, mammalian predator.

Identify the scientists connected to The Wild Ones or other local experts that can field questions from your students on the specific animals. Inform these people that they should expect questions from your students and explain the project you are working on.

Complete a bibliographical search for appropriate resource materials for your students' work. Organize these materials on a cart in the school's library or in your classroom if possible.

Planning For The Trip

This stage of the study involves both teachers and students, and requires a clear statement of objectives and goals for the students.

Several days prior to your visit, explain to your students that you will be making trip(s) to the zoo as part of your study of animal adaptations. You will be doing this to observe living specimens and collect information about their habits and how they have adapted to their habitat. It is important to review some possible adaptations with your students.

Then you will need to provide your students with a categorized list of the animals available to them at the zoo. The categories should reflect the comparisons of adaptation you wish your students to make. Instruct the students to choose two animals from different categories.

Based on the objectives you have articulated to your students, instruct them to begin identifying the questions they have about their chosen animals.

Comparative Studies for Zoo Trips

Older Children:

predator-prey
nocturnal-diurnal
aquatic-terrestrial-arboreal
social-independent

Younger Children:

beaks and feet
fur and feathers
flippers and fins
camouflage

Record Keeping

The final stage of trip preparation is recordkeeping design. If your students do not already keep a bound notebook for their science work, provide them with journals for this project.

When making observations of behaviors, physical appearance it is helpful to employ the structure of a dialectic notebook. This is a notebook with the page divided in two columns. In the first column observations are recorded. In the second column, in opposition to each observation, questions and hypotheses are recorded. This allows the person making the observations to carry on a conversation with him/herself. Most importantly, it provides a structure that organizes the notes, and makes them a useful resource in developing and supporting conclusions. It further provides a record of what information is not yet fully understood. Don't forget to make drawings, photographs, video and audio tapes part of your students recording repertoire. These are all the tools of field biologists, and are necessary to the processes of documenting work and sharing it with peers.

Group your students based on the proximity of the animals they are studying in the zoo. This will help with supervision during your visits. With one or two other chaperones per class, your class can be in as many different parts of the zoo simultaneously. Make explicit rendezvous points and times, and set the length of each observation to suit the needs and attention span of your students. The longer your students can productively observe an animal, the more meaningful their total experience will be.

First Visit

Remind chaperones and students of their objectives, itinerary, rendezvous times and places, make sure everyone has all of their materials ready, and release them to their first observation. As head teacher, it is ideal to roam between your groups of students. This of course, is only possible with adequate adult support. Being free to roam, you can more accurately assess the work of your students in the field, prompt them to make specific observations through questioning, and in general be available to them for their questions.

Rendezvous between animals and share observations. This sharing is perhaps one of the most important parts of children's development in critical thinking and observation. By listening to each other, they will make connections between the different animals being observed. By sharing their observations, they are forced to articulate and clarify their ideas and be challenged by their peers.

Take a short break, perhaps to watch a particular animal being fed or to feed yourselves.

Make observations of a second animal, and meet again for sharing before returning to school.

Between Visits

Students next need to analyze the data collected to identify information that can be used to answer their pre-visit questions. Accompanying this process is the communication with biologists studying the particular animals, and the use of resource books, videos, and web resources to round out the information the students have collected. Also during this period, students should meet in a variety of peer groups to share and discuss the information they have collected on their animals.

Provide activities and experiences for your students between visits to the zoo to explore specific concepts of adaptation. These activities might include camouflage simulations, examination of skulls and comparison of dentition and eye placement, exploring binocular and peripheral vision, or using different tools to simulate different beaks.

Second Visit

This final visit should follow the same itinerary as the first visit. The goals of the second trip are slightly different this time, and again should be clearly articulated to the chaperones and students. The second trip is an opportunity to confirm and verify previous observations, answer new questions, and most importantly, to support or refute hypotheses. If you were able to schedule trips at different seasons, it is also the time to make those comparisons.

Synthesis and Assessment

Following the final visit to the zoo, instruct students to choose one of the two animals to focus on for the final product. Suggestions to help them in this decision would be the depth of their research and interest with the animal.

Allow a last round of meetings with peers to discuss related animals or adaptations, and a final opportunity to consult the biologists and reference materials before setting about preparing the final product.

Possible final products include traditional research reports, video documentaries or photographic essays, web pages, murals, short stories, even creative movement and song. Give your students the chance to choose a medium they feel most comfortable with to share their conclusions. Whatever the medium chosen, you will be able to assess their understanding of the concepts of physical and behavioral adaptation.

Celebratory Sharing

After this intensive work, a little celebration is called for. Depending on flexibility of schedules and class sizes, you may need to carry the sharing into more than one period. Ideally, schedule a public space in the school, like an auditorium, and have students share pieces of their work. These sharings can be as serious or as playful as you are comfortable with, but should celebrate the work done. Each student should be given five to ten minutes to present. Invite parents and administrators to a presentation of the final products, and don't forget to share part or all of the work with The Wild Ones!

Submit your own curriculum plans to The Wild Ones for publication.

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