Dawson the Cub Activities | Artshine

Grade 2:

• Understanding Life Systems: Growth and Changes in Animals

  • Overall Expectations:

    • investigate similarities and differences in the characteristics of various animals;

    • demonstrate an understanding that animals grow and change and have distinct characteristics.

  • Specific Expectations:

    • observe and compare the physical characteristics (e.g., fur or feathers; two legs or no legs) and the behavioural characteristics (e.g., predator or prey) of a variety of animals, including insects, using student-generated questions and a variety of methods and resources (e.g., observation of live animals in the schoolyard; books, videos/DVDs, CD-ROMs, and/or Internet sources that depict animals in a positive light)

  • Activity Idea:

    • Dawson the wolf is an animal that you don’t commonly see walking in your neighbourhood. Wolves prefer to live in wooded areas, with other types of animals.

    • Look outside the window and see if you can spot any animals. What animals do you see? A bird? Squirrels?

    • What are some similarities between a wolf like Dawson and the animal that you saw out your window?

    • Write down some physical similarities and differences between the two.

Grade 4:

•  Reading and Writing

  • Overall Expectations:

    • generate, gather, and organize ideas and information to write for an intended purpose and audience;

  • Specific Expectations:

    • generate ideas about a potential topic using a variety of strategies and resources (e.g., brainstorm; formulate and ask questions to identify personal experiences, prior knowledge, and information needs)

    • gather information to support ideas for writing using a variety of strategies and oral, print, and electronic sources (e.g., identify key words to help narrow their searches; cluster ideas; develop a plan for locating information; scan texts for specif- ic information, including teacher read-alouds, mentor texts, reference texts, shared-, guided-, and independent-reading texts, and media texts)

  • Activity Idea:

    • Every picture has a story! What do you think the story is behind Dawson the wolf?

    • Challenge yourself to investigate what other animals might live in the same environment as the wolf. Do some research to figure this out!

    • Create the story about your picture using the new information you have learned from researching, and illustrate the pages.

Grade 6:

• Understanding Life Systems Biodiversity

  • Overall Expectations:

    • investigate the characteristics of living things, and classify diverse organisms according to specific characteristics;

  • Specific Expectations:

    • investigate the organisms found in a specific habitat and classify them according to a classi- fication system

    • use a variety of forms (e.g., oral, written, graphic, multimedia) to communicate with different audiences and for a variety of purposes (e.g., use a graphic organizer to show comparisons between organisms in various communities)

  • Activity Idea:

    • Wolves are a member of the canidae family. Animals that are a part of the canidae family live in a variety of different environments. Dogs, who are also a member of the canidae family, mainly live in houses. But do wolves live in houses?

    • In your picture of Dawson he is not surrounded by his habitat - did it make you wonder where a wolf lives?

    • Investigate the environment in which a wolf lives, and determine what other animals live in the same type of environment. Describe 5 features of a wolf’s environment.