The San Francisco Zoo offers teachers a fabulous way to teach California biodiversity to elementary students. The free lessons provide teachers with activities and experiments to inspire students to learn all they can about their animal. After the lessons are finished, students create their masterpiece and enter it in the Wild About Art and Science Contest.
Wild About Art and Science Program
Every year the San Francisco Zoo holds a “Wild About Art and Science” contest for San Francisco Unified School District K-5 students. The curriculum is aligned to the California science content standards. They offer a free teacher workshop for SFUSD elementary teachers.
They focus on six different animals. Each grade has its own specific California animal and habitat. The animals are desert tortoise, barn owl, tiger salamander, garter snake, turkey vulture, and river otter. Each animal comes with a lesson plan and a fact sheet.
Activities to Enhance Science Learning
- Kindergarteners learn about the desert tortoise. They identify the different body parts and figure out what it might be used for.
- First graders pretend to be owls in the dark for their experiment. As the teacher walks around the room and makes noises, students keep their eyes closed. Students can only rely on their ears to guess where the teacher is and what object created the noise.
- Second graders learn about permeability and how fast chemicals move into an animal’s body. Their simple experiment with eggs and food coloring helps students learn the concept quickly.
- Third graders learn about adaptations that helped snakes survive for millions of year. Students then design their own amazing reptile.
- Fourth graders learn about turkey vultures and the role they play in a food web. Students realize that everything in the ecosystem is essential to a food web, because when one thing disappears, everything else is affected.
- Fifth graders discover how an oil spill affects an otter and other wildlife. Students create a mock oil spill and attempt to clean it up.
Art Improves Learning
When students have learned all they can about their animal, it is time to draw. Drawing helps students reflect on everything learned. Students turn facts into details and create a masterpiece.
Besides creating the drawing, students also need to submit a one paragraph description of the drawing. Each grade has its own writing prompt.
Prizes for the Winners
One artwork from each grade and special education class will be chosen by the judges. Each winner receives an invitation for their entire class to attend the Wild About Art and Science Day at the zoo. There will be animal encounters, guided tours, lunch, and an award ceremony. The winner also gets a VIP-family pack of tickets to ZooFest for Kids.
Integrating science and art in the classroom is easy and fun with free lessons from the San Francisco Zoo. Experiments and activities make science learning fun and engaging. When students are finished with their artwork and paragraph, teachers can create a class book to read over and over again.
Joanna Szeto - Joanna has taught six years as a bilingual teacher for newcomer students. She has also taught arts and crafts over the summer. She earned ...
