WE ARE GOING ON  SAFARI!

CONTEXTUALIZATION

Many young children have a natural fascination with animals, and exploring this interest can make learning more engaging and enjoyable. Plus, animal-themed activities can integrate various subjects, such as science, language arts, math, or art. Finally, understanding animals and their habitats can foster a natural world appreciation, encourage environmental stewardship from a young age, and help broaden students' world understanding.

Students are doing a research project to select a class name. This year’s theme is animals, so in the teaching unit, pupils are working with vocabulary related to animals, their food, their habitat… During it, a trip to the zoo will be carried out to put into practice their knowledge. The final objective of this project is to describe the basic qualities of animals and to differentiate between different habitats and diets through speaking, reading, writing, and listening.

• Target group. 2nd grade students.

• Target language level (according to CEFR): A1. 

• Location. Playground or gym (to have more space).

• Distribution. Groups of 4 to 5 students.

SWBATs

• Students will be able to acquire knowledge about their group animals and share it with others in order to become experts in all of them. 

• Students will be able to actively participate in the learning process and broaden their knowledge of numerous animal species by using digital devices (cards, apps, etc.).

PRE-TASK

Words up! Each student will have a card with a drawing of an animal, and they will put it on their forehead without looking at it. They will get in pairs or small groups and students will have to interact with each other asking questions to guess the animal on their forehead. Questions can be about its diet, its habitat, its color, etc. The other players will answer with yes or no until everybody knows which animal they got.  It can take around 20 minutes to play with different peers and groups.

MAIN TASK

The main activity consists of three riddles to learn new animals through augmented reality (AR), and the app explanation.

Each group of 4 to 5 students will have different riddles, and by guessing which animal is the riddle about, they will have to enter the app Animal Safari AR (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.lightup.safari&hl=es&gl=US) and look for that animal. Once they have it, they will click on it to make it big and see it through the camera, appreciating the augmented reality. Moreover, the app allows feeding the animal with lettuce, meat, or strawberries, and depending on their diet, the animals will eat it or not. It also gives more information about the selected animal such as a description of it, its location with a world map, and information about its diet. 

After playing and interacting with the app, students will have to fill out a chart writing the name of the animal, which type of diet it has, and its habitat. It can take around 35 minutes. 

Examples of riddles: 

RIDDLE 1

(African Elephant)

I am big and strong, with a trunk so long,

In Africa, where I belong.

Gray and wrinkled, you cannot miss,

Who am I?

RIDDLE 2

(Goliath Spider)

I have 8 legs and lots of eyes.

They are impressed by my size. 

I like to make webs to hunt my prey.

“mmmm… it’s delicious” I always say.

RIDDLE 3

(Chick)

I have 2 legs, a tail, and wings, but I cannot fly.

Oh, how would I love to reach the sky…

I am cute and small,

and my dad wakes everybody up.

POST-TASK

Students will go on a trip to the zoo the whole morning. There, we will take back the groups from the AR activity, and we will start visiting all the animals. When we arrive at one that they worked with AR, they will be in charge of explaining to the rest of the class the animal's characteristics that they have previously learned. They will take the roles of zoo guides. This way, the class will learn about all the animals and become experts in all. 

Then, in class, they will have to discuss the animals they saw, which ones they liked the most/least, some interesting facts they learned, etc. Then, they will have to vote for their favorite animal to become the class name.

EXAMPLES OF THE APP IN USE