Animal Adaptations

Welcome to the Inquiry Guide for Animal Adaptations! This guide is here to help us gain a deeper understanding of animal adaptations and to help us navigate through the many available resources that we may discover as we explore our questions about animal adaptations.

We will be following a process called the Guided Inquiry Design Process, which includes eight stages: Open, Immerse, Explore, Identify, Gather, Create, Share, an Evaluate. This guide will help you navigate through the first five stages.

Through this process, we will work to achieve five types of learning:

  • Curriculum Content

  • Information Literacy

  • Learning how to learn

  • Literacy competency

  • Social Skills

Teachers: This guide is intended for third grade students and meets the Iowa Core Standards for Third Grade Life Science as well as several AASL Standards. Students will develop their own inquiry questions related to animal adaptations to guide their research. They will meet in flexible groups referred to as Inquiry Circles throughout the inquiry process. For further information about the Guided Inquiry Design Process, you can read Guided Inquiry Design: A Framework for Inquiry in Your School by: Kuhlthau, Maniotes, and Caspari.

Inquiry Tools

Inquiry Journal

Click on the link above to find your Inquiry Journal.

We will use this journal to write and reflect throughout the inquiry process. The journal will be used to help us connect what we already know with what we learn about animal adaptations. It is also a place to take notes and practice the skills that we will need to complete our inquiry projects.

Inquiry Log

Click on the link above to find your Inquiry Log.

We will use this log to keep track of all of our sources and to evaluate which sources work best to answer our inquiry questions. This is an important step in the inquiry process. Keeping a detailed record of our sources will make citing our sources easy!

Let's begin with the OPEN stage!

Citation for image used in header for all pages:
Royalty Free Clipart Image of an Assortment of Animals in Green Silhouette. Clipart. iCLIPART for Schools, Vital Imagery Ltd., 01-03-2010, https://schools.iclipart.com/download.php?iid=311421&tl=clipart. Accessed 22-04-2020.
Citation for Guided Inquiry Design Process used throughout the Inquiry Guide:
Kuhlthau, C.C., Maniotes, L.K., and Capari, A.K. (2012). Guided inquiry design; A framework for inquiry in yourschool. Libraries Unlimited.
Citation for Home Page:
Chameleon Clipart. Clipart. iCLIPART for Schools, Vital Imagery Ltd., 13-11-2006, https://schools.iclipart.com/download.php?iid=154347&tl=clipart. Accessed 21-04-2020.
“Guided Inquiry Design.” Carol Kuhlthau, 2020, wp.comminfo.rutgers.edu/ckuhlthau/guided-inquiry-design/.
Kuhlthau, C.C., Maniotes, L.K., and Capari, A.K. (2012). Guided inquiry design; A framework for inquiry in yourschool. Libraries Unlimited.