Sea Horse Habitats

Objective

Create a poster that teaches about sea horses.

Materials

Field trip to aquarium shop
Posters
Crayons
Markers
Reference books about sea horses
Computer with Internet access, bookmarked sites
Rubric for oral presentation
Students can also use a computer program, such as AppleWorks, Student Writing Center, Microsoft Word to design, edit and print out a computer-generated poster

Procedure

1. Arrange a field trip to a local aquarium shop. An example would be Pet Supermarket.
2. A virtual tour of a sea horse in its natural habitat is available at Project Sea Horse.
3. Upon return from the field trip create groups of four students and assign them a 
   geographical region to study.
   Examples would be: Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, Caribbean Sea.
4. Assign each student a role: researcher, artist, recorder, presenter.
5. Discuss role descriptions:
   Artist chooses sea horse for group to learn about and draws a picture for the poster.
   Researcher locates information about sea horses.
   Recorder writes information found about the habitat, eating habits, color and size of sea horse.
   Presenter gives oral report to classmates about poster.
6. Allow class time for investigation of sea horses.  Students should use resource books and computer.
7. Presenter gives oral report to classmates.  Teacher creates oral presentation rubric using Rubistar web site.

Evaluation

Teacher evaluates oral presentations using the Rubistar rubric.

Extension

Students can present their posters over the closed circuit television so the entire school would benefit from their research.
Students can also have a "Sea Horse Night" and invite their parents and siblings to school to showcase their research.

Home Learning

Students will create a distribution map to show where sea horses can be found.  An example of a distribution map can be found at the Project Sea Horse web site.