The Amazonian Rainforest

Grade level- 3rd grade

Time- 4 week unit

S.S.Standards
-STANDARD 3 – GEOGRAPHY
Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the
geography of the interdependent world in which we live — local, national, and global —
including the distribution of people, places, and environments over the Earth’s surface.
STANDARD 4 – ECONOMICS
Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of how
the United States and other societies develop economic systems and associated
institutions to allocate scarce resources, how major decision-making units function in the
U.S. and other national economies, and how an economy solves the scarcity problem
through market and non-market mechanisms.

Technology Standards
Standard 1- Creativity and Innovation
Standard 3- Research and Information Fluency
Standard 6- Technology Operations and Concepts

ART Standards
Standard 1: Creating, Performing and Participating in the Arts
Students will actively engage in the processes that constitute creation and performance in
the arts (dance, music, theatre, and visual arts) and participate in various roles in the arts.
Standard 2: Knowing and Using Arts Materials and Resources
Students will be knowledgeable about and make use of the materials and resources
available for
Participation in the arts in various roles.

Objective-
• Students will successfully implement and execute the goals of each week’s lesson
plans.
• Students will learn about the location, animals, and people of the rainforest.
• Students will learn about the environmental impact of eliminating rainforests
• Students will use technology to achieve their weekly goals.

Assessment:
• Students will be fully engaged in using the websites and accomplishing the
projects given.
• Students will all have the opportunity to successfully use slide share and present
to the class their product.
• Students will be assessesed daily on how engaged they are in work.

Week 1: In this week:

• Students will learn about the 3 sub areas of rainforest and locate where it is on a
map.
• Students will learn about the value of the rainforest and what will happen as it
shrinks.
• Students will learn causes of the disappearing rainforest.
• Students will read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss and find the message contained.
Students will answer questions- “I think”, “I know” and “I wonder”.

We will go through the websites below to get familiar with the rainforest. An overhead
projector will be used:
http://www.mongabay.com

http://www.eduweb.com/rainforest/worldmap

Children will explore these websites on their own during computer time. These websites
will be used throughout the project:
http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/education

http://www/pbs.org/journeyintoamazonia

http://www.field-trips.org/sci/rainforest/index.htm
On these websites students will click on interactive game where they will learn about the
creatures that live in the Rainforest. They can click on coloring books to print a picture to
color.

Week 2: In week #1 students got a taste for the animals and life of the Amazonian
Rainforest.
• This week students will look at the plants and flowers that create the rainforest
and create an Ecosystem for the classroom using some plants from the rainforest.
The directions for building this can be found at:
Mini Ecosystems Activity.doc
• Students will play the game Charades in the classroom using a prop box as
described in www.creativedrama.com and using props they create themselves.
Students will pick an animal or person (farmer, tribal person, ecologist, and
logger) they have read about and give class a few clues while pantomiming the
actions of the animal or person.

Week 3: Students will learn more about the food, music and people of this region.
• The students will log back on to www.field-trips.org/sci/rainforest/index.htm
and follow pages 5-7 to learn more about the people of this region.
• Students will look at list of products from the Amazon and check off what they
know and have used.
products from the Amazon.doc
• Students will read stories about children from this region on:
http:/www.rainforest-alliance.org/education
and click on “kids” and then “stories” and choose a child to read about.
• Students will write a short story of what they learned about this person and how
their lives are different and share it with the class.

Week 4:
• This week the students will pair up and learn how to create a slideshow using
www.slideshare.net
• They will use app. 10 pictures that they can copy and paste from Google
images or other verified websites they have used throughout these past weeks.
• Students will write a short narrative to go along with the pictures either as a
travel agent or as an ecologist.
• Students will share their presentations to the class using a microphone.
• After the slide presentations we will sample some foods from the region.
http://slideshare.net/suep25/amazon-travel-video
.