ABSTRACT
Elementary students love learning about how animals behave, what animals eat, why some animals are more dangerous than others are, and why animals look the way they do. This lesson taps into this natural curiosity and ignites students’ curiosity about camouflage and mimicry! The goal for this third grade lesson is for students to demonstrate an understanding of the advantages of being camouflaged, how animals become camouflaged, and why some animals mimic more dangerous organisms (National Science Education Standard, Life Science Content Standard C: Organisms and their Environments [National Research Council [NRC] 1996]; A Framework for K–12 Science Education, Dimension Three, Core Ideas: LS3.B [NRC 2012]; and Next Generation Science Standards, Variation of Traits: LS3.B [NRC 2013]). Our experience teaching this lesson is that students believe animals such as lions and zebras (animals that do not automatically change color like the chameleon) had at one point in their ancestry mindfully changed colors to blend into their environment. Students have said, “Owls look like trees because that is where they live.” Students cannot articulate that resulting from competition and predator/prey interactions, specific physical and behavioral characteristics within a population of a particular species are more beneficial for survival and, subsequently, more likely to reproduce. At the end of the lesson, students should understand that rather than animal selection, it is the environment selecting certain physical or behavioral traits over others.
