In this unit, students investigate the environmental and genetic factors that influence an animal’s characteristics and potential for success. They build a description of a bird with reference to its behavioral and physical traits and make predictions about how these traits might indicate food sources and appropriate environment. Finally, they design and refine solutions to benefit the bird’s chances of survival in a given environment. 

• Native species, variation in traits; specialized traits 

     This unit has a creativity and critical thinking focus: 

• Evaluate the needs of a bird and whether the local environment provides for that bird’s needs

• Generate solutions to a problem about the birds in a community, evaluate the solution for effectiveness, and determine revisions.

Web and Print

• Shared Trait Chart

Other 

• Bird Feeder supplies (recycled materials -- containers, perches, twine, tools for making feeders)

   Opportunities to adapt, extend, and enrich 

• This mini-unit is based on portions of the three learning sets in a sequence of six learning sets. The remaining learning sets have students compare female and male birds of the same species and describe physical traits, then compare those physical traits with another bird species. They examine the behaviors of some birds such as migratory and non-migratory birds. They read texts about hawks in different environments (plains and old-growth forests) who differ in size and wingspan. They learn about heredity and traits and argue that these physical changes provided an advantage over thousands of years.

• The remaining learning sets, along with additional STEM project-learning units and related resources can be found at https://sprocket.lucasedresearch.org/course/science3/birds  and  https://mlpbl.open3d.science/ ML-PBL Units were co-developed by the Multiple Literacies in Project-based Learning Project at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan 2018–2020. ML-PBL units are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. The work was funded by the George Lucas Educational Foundation.

English Version

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YQSus37wI5FK4aY534ACsz8pjJ3Cd_WSTkb3SkZQJtg/edit?usp=sharing

Hindi Version

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fJ7SzzZ_9xO6BJ-09xruOL9ZgQesxaHP7OtaXKQaqtA/edit?usp=sharing

Gujarati Version

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Iqr0WN1paKYCnhFPkHJbztHAGIviKq5E5lNCI8aHe-s/edit?usp=sharing 

Kannada Version

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sQ91NG5tlcpuDkPq7O7208GPLxoVB7f6hd3vosffZAo/edit?usp=drive_link