Curiosity with Purpose: Grade 5 Investigates Animal Adaptations

What would it feel like to have a layer of blubber keeping you warm in Arctic waters? Our Grade 5 students pressed their hands into ice and lard to find out. 

That experiment was part of the launch of their new Unit of Inquiry (UOI), Sharing the Planet, a unit built around the transdisciplinary theme of the interdependence of human and natural worlds. In a UOI, students inquire their way toward understanding a central idea, connecting science, literacy and humanities along the way.  

To open the unit, students rotated through classrooms, where different teachers introduced different environments, polar, rainforest, and desert, and how the animals who live there have adapted to survive. Students also visited Luo Hong Art Museum to be inspired by the amazing wildlife photography. By the time they got their hands messy with the blubber experiment, they were asking the question that drives the unit: How do animals' adaptations help them survive? 

Each student then chose an animal to investigate, and they're spending two weeks researching the structural and behavioral adaptations that allow it to thrive. Alongside the threats it faces from climate change, poaching, and habitat loss. Each researcher will then present their findings in the format of their choosing, a class presentation, a poster, a Canva creation, or a written report, to name a few. 

For example, Alina chose the fennec fox: "If you look at a picture of it, it has huge ears," she explains. "Those ears are so big, they're like a personal air conditioner. It pushes out hot air and lets in cool air." Abel went with the little blue penguin, the only penguin species that breeds on Australia's mainland coast, he can tell you about its three eyelids ("one sideways and two like humans," the protective third eyelid lets it see underwater) and how it sheds and regrows its waterproof feathers during moulting season. 

The students also share challenges they have run into during their research. For Abel, it's been the sheer volume: "Adaptation covers so much information," he says, flipping through pages of Cornell notes covering both behavioral and structural adaptations, "and behavioral and structural are both challenging." For Alina, it was a question the internet didn't want to answer easily: fennec foxes can survive long stretches without water, but why? "It took me a little while," she admits, "but I finally found that they survive because they have specialized kidneys." 

Choice at WAB always comes with high expectations attached, as every student works from the same research brief and success criteria, checking their own progress against a student-friendly rubric as they go. Teachers guide each animal selection so there's rich material to dig into, curate resources for students who need a head start, and share exemplar projects in different formats so that every child knows exactly what excellent looks like before they begin. 

"It's not about regurgitating fun facts about your animal," explains Grade 5 teacher Ms. Jessica Winter. Students have to read an article, pull out the information that actually answers their research question, and leave the rest behind. Students are also learning Cornell note-taking, the same method used in Middle School. "You write the keywords here," Abel explains, pointing to his own notes, "and you write your bullet point notes there." And they're learning to judge their sources, Alina can list hers: the World Wildlife Fund, Animal Behavior Corner, Smithsonian's National Zoo, a YouTube video and can already spot the difference between a website with real depth and "ones which just say one thing." 

Additionally, one line of inquiry asks how human choices impact the natural world, this is early preparation for the changemaker thinking expected of WAB students. On threats to their animals, Alina discovered that hunters kill mother fennec foxes to take the babies and sell them as pets. "They look adorable," she says, "but if you find a wild one, they will bite you." Abel traced the history of his penguins being hunted in the 1800s, shot for food, for their skins, even for sport. 

Ask the students what they've learned and you'll hear it in their own words: how to find answers that may be hidden at first, how to tell a good source from a thin one, how to say "I don't know yet, let me keep looking a little harder."