paleo sharkspaleo bugs

TEACHER’S GUIDE

3-7grades

IntroductIon

Paleo SharKS and Paleo BuGS Written and Illustrated by Timothy J. Bradley

Whether you imagine giant sea creatures cruising ancient oceans or strange armored bugs of all sizes roaming the earth or flying in the sky above, the world of prehistoric creatures is both frightening and fascinat-ing. in Paleo Sharks and Paleo Bugs, author and illustrator Tim Bradley brings the wonder of these ancient creatures to light. First the reader is introduced to the organism: what it means to be a shark, or what an arthropod is, for example. Students do not need to be ex-pert biologists to know how these animals are categorized by scientists. Both books include a timeline of life on Earth, from the Paleozoic era to the present-day Cenozoic era. Each timeline lists when each creature discussed in the book actually lived. Then the parade of strange and fascinating ancient organisms is introduced. With exciting illustrations that compare the paleo sharks and paleo bugs to modern counterparts, the readers are present-ed with short, amazing descriptions of the organisms. The comparisons of ancient ani-mals to modern animals brings this previously unknown world to the surface. The author uses the reader’s current knowledge about sharks and other creatures of the deep to de-scribe the paleo predators. Likewise, insects and bugs of the fields and forests of today are used to describe the bugs of the distant past. Both books are perfect for independent reading as well as springboards for many spe-cial projects and activities throughout upper elementary and middle school grades.

general overvieW

this teacher’s guide contains:

Pre-Planned activities for students

1. science

2. language arts/art

3. social studies

This teacher’s guide to the books Paleo Sharks and Paleo Bugs will help teachers ex-plore the books as resources for activities in science, math, language arts, social studies, and art. Because the books follow the same pattern, the activities can be used with either one or both tours of our ancient past. Many of the activities in this guide can be integrated into multiple disciplines and many areas of exploration. With the exciting illustrations and incredible attention to detail, these books can be used as a starting point into the very nature of science and what it feels like to discover ancient worlds.

A QUICK GUIDE TO HOW THESE ACTIVITIES MEET THE FOLLOWING EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS:

SCieNCe CoNteNt StaNdard C

SCieNCe CoNteNt StaNdard d

SCieNCe CoNteNt StaNdard G

StaNdardS for the eNGliSh laNGuaGe artS

NatioNal art StaNdardS

NatioNal CouNCil for the SoCial StudieSNatioNal StaNdardS

1 science activities

How Old Is Old? TImELINE/SCALE ACTIVITY The organisms featured in Paleo Sharks and Paleo Bugs lived a long, long time ago. What does this mean? How long is a long, long time ago? Specifically, they lived during the Paleozoic, mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras. What is an era? Students need to understand how the history of the earth is divided and studied. Tim Bradley includes timelines in each of these books to help students understand when the bugs and sharks were roaming their habitats, but students might need a better introduction to geologic time and paleo timelines.

Earth is approximately 5 billion years old (more precisely 4.6 billion, or 4,600,000,000 years). This is a number that is so large that most of us cannot really comprehend it. There are a number of very good Web-based resources that can be used to help students understand the age of Earth and the geologic time scale. (See the list of resources at the end of this activity.) This is a simple, hands-on exercise that will help your students get a “feeling” for 5 billion years and just when the sharks and bugs actually lived. It can take anywhere from one 45-minute period to several periods depending on the amount of detail the students are asked to add to their timeline.

mATERIALS NEEDED • 1 roll of adding machine tape, or a length of folded computer paper, or a stack of white copy paper and tape

• A meter stick or straight-edge

• Access to the Internet

• Pencils, pens, markers, crayons, etc.

• Calculator (optional)

PROCEDURE _First, divide your class into groups of four or five students (smaller groups also will work, but each student will have more work to do and the activity might take longer). _Each group should measure out 5 meters of adding machine tape, or folded computer paper. If neither of these is available then give them enough copier paper to tape together end to end (horizontally) to make a piece of paper that is 5 meters long. _Next, the students will draw a line down the middle of the tape/paper from the left to the right side. The students will use this to create a geologic timeline. Show the groups the timelines from the books as an example of what a geologic timeline looks like. Keep in mind that the timelines in the books only depict the Paleozoic, mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras. _The timeline the students will create should go all the way back to the Precambrian era—Earth’s beginning.

paleozoic eraabout 543 to 290 million years ago

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

First, divide your class into groups of four or five students (smaller groups also will work, but each student will have more work to do and the activity might take longer). Each group should measure out 5 meters of adding machine tape, or folded computer paper. If neither of these is avail-able then give them enough copier paper to tape together end to end (horizontally) to make a piece of paper that is 5 meters long. Next, the students will draw a line down the middle of the tape/paper from the left to the right side. The students will use this to create a geologic timeline. Show the groups the timelines from the books as an example of what a geologic timeline looks like. Keep in mind that the time-lines in the books only depict the Paleozoic, mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras. The timeline the students will create should go all the way back to the Precambrian era—Earth’s begin-ning. Information for the full geologic timeline can be found on may Web sites. Some that are especially helpful are:

The Paleontology Portalhttp://www.paleoportal.org/

Life Has a Historyhttp://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/explorations/tours/intro/index.html

Getting Into the Fossil Recordhttp://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/explorations/tours/fossil/index.html

Humboldt State University Life Through Time Exhibithttp://www.humboldt.edu/~natmus/e_LifeThroughTime.html

Web Geological Time Machinehttp://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/timeform.html

mesozoic eraabout 250 to 141 million years ago

cenozoic eraabout 65 million years ago to present

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

The scale that the students will use to make their timeline is 1 cm = 10 million years. They can create a label with this scale on the lower edge of the paper. Starting from the right edge of the paper tape, the students will now mark out one meter at a time on the line. Each meter will represent one billion years. The last mark will be only 60 cm from the fourth mark (representing 600 million years.) The 4.6 billion year old Earth is now represented on the timeline. Have the students use the 1 cm = 10 million years scale and the information from the Web sites to label each of the time periods from the present-day Cenozoic to the oldest era, the Precambrian. The students can then use the timelines in the books to place the various bugs and sharks on their timelines. Have them draw pictures of the organisms. They can even add other organisms and events from the Web timelines. Have them place humans on their timelines too. They will discover how short a time humans have been around. The groups can color the events and organisms. As a final activity and assessment of the entire project, each group can describe “their world” to the rest of the class. Or you can have them take the class on a guided tour of “their world.”

Here is a brief outline of some of the major earth events the students might find:

Geoligic Time Scalehttp://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/explorations/tours/ geotime/guide/geologictimescale.html

Birthday Bugs/Birthday Sharks

Did any of the paleo sharks or paleo bugs ever get a birthday card? Probably not! This activity teaches the students about geologic time and the geologic time-scale of Bradley’s ancient sharks and bugs in a fun, creative way. It can be used to meet science course standards, art standards, math standards, and also language arts standards.

In this activity the students will create a Paleo Birthday Card for a bug or shark of their choosing. They will need to be familiar with the timeline of the paleo sharks or bugs that is included in each book. A calculator is also handy along with copier paper and either color markers or crayons.

We know that Earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old. If we compressed all of this ancient history into one theoretical year, we can calculate which “day” in this year a particular time period or geological or paleontological event occurred. We can then call this “day” a “geologic birthday.” This task involves solving ratio problems (mathematics standards.) One simple way to do this activity is to tell the students to pick a favorite shark or bug to send a birthday card to. Next, chal-lenge them to figure out how to determine what day of the year they should send their card if all of Earth’s history (4.6 billion years,) were compressed into a 365 day year. Tell them to cre-ate text for their card (language arts standards) and decorate it (art standards) based on information they get from Paleo Sharks or Paleo Bugs and from Internet resources (see list of resources on previous pages).

An alternative way to accomplish this activity is to give them the steps they must follow to determine when their favorite animal’s (shark or bug) geologic birthday would fall.

FOLLOW THESE STEPS:

1. Divide the age of Earth by the number of days in a year. (4.6 billion or 4600 million years.) 4600 years / 365 days = 12,602,740 years per day).

2. Find how many millions of years ago the favorite shark of bug lived or appeared. For example, the Falcatus is listed on the time line at 320 million years ago. If each day of our “year” equals 12,602,740 years, divide this number into 320,000,000 to find out how many days before December 31 (present day) the shark existed. (320,000,000 years / 12,602,740 years per day = 25.39130379584 days, which can simply be rounded to 25 days.). If present time is represented by December 31, then 25 days before this is December 6 (31-25=6.). Falcatus had a geologic birthday on December 6.

3. Have the student create a card based on what Earth was like, what other organisms existed, and what their animal looked like while it lived. This information can be found in Bradley’s books and on the Internet. Have them create a poem that will be the card’s text and remind them to include when this “geologic birthday” actually falls (e.g.. 320 million years ago on December 6).

4. Have your students share their cards with the rest of the class.

5. As a follow-up activity you may have the students explore when their own birthday would fall on the geologic time scale by going backward with this same process. What did Earth look like? Were there living things around yet? How about sharks or bugs?

1a NatioNal SCieNCe StaNdardS

CONTENT STANDARD C: As a result of their activities in grades 5-8,

all students should develop understanding of:

• Diversity and adaptations of organisms

• Millions of species of animals, plants, and microorganisms are alive

today. Although different species might look dissimilar, the unity

among organisms becomes apparent from an analysis of internal

structures, the similarity of their chemical processes, and the evidence

of common ancestry.

• Biological evolution accounts for the diversity of species developed

through gradual processes over many generations. Species acquire

many of their unique characteristics through biological adaptation,

which involves the selection of naturally occurring variations in popula-

tions. Biological adaptations include changes in structures, behaviors,

or physiology that enhance survival and reproductive success in a

particular environment.

• Extinction of a species occurs when the environment changes and

the adaptive characteristics of a species are insufficient to allow its

survival. Fossils indicate that many organisms that lived long ago are

extinct. Extinction of species is common; most of the species that have

lived on Earth no longer exist.

CONTENT STANDARD D: As a result of their activities in grades 5-8,

all students should develop an understanding of:

• Earth’s history

• Fossils provide important evidence of how life and environmental

conditions have changed.

language arts/ art activity2

Journaling In a Paleo World

In this activity, the students will become paleontologists who are investigating a particular paleo bug or shark. You can as-sign each student a particular organism so there is a greater diversity of projects or you can simply allow the students to choose one to explore.

The students can then create a journal entry as though they were paleontologists that were able to travel back in time to the ancient environment in which their target animal lived. Their scientific entries can be fashioned after real scientific field jour-nals. They can be very detailed and illustrated if the students gather information from Bradley’s books as well as the many online resources previously given.

See the following Web resources for information about field journals:

http://www.prbo.org/cms/docs/edu/activity1_031006.pdfhttp://miles.frc.ri.cmu.edu:8080/fieldreports/05lita.1006journal.pdf

The students should be able to use the Internet resources to explore Earth’s environment during these ancient time peri-ods. They can find out about the geology— stratigraphy (rock layers) and tectonics (plate movement), transformations and extinctions, along with other ancient life. The strata can give information about geologic events, the age of the fossils found, the topography of the area, and the ancient climate.

When the students are finished with their Paleo Journals you can arrange them in the same order as the timelines in the books so the other members of the class can see how their journey fits in with the progression of Earth’s history.

What’s a Paleontologist? CAREER ACTIVITY

Timothy Bradley’s Paleo Sharks and Paleo Bugs can be very useful tools for student career explorations. The excitement and adventure the paleontologist experiences as he or she uncovers secrets of ancient sharks or fossilized insects can be found throughout the books. To enhance a science career exploration, the teacher can have students interview a make-believe scientist. The students start the interview by creating a series of questions about what a paleontologist is and what they do. Each student can then ask their questions to another student in the class. The student that is interviewed will make up answers based on information they found in the Paleo books. Then the students can reverse roles.

To make this experience even more beneficial, the students can research paleontology on the Internet. The Internet sites previously listed will be very helpful. In addition, the following sites that feature interviews with real paleontologists will greatly enhance their understanding of what a paleontologist does:

http://www.vertpaleo.org/education/profiles/kcurryrogers.cfmhttp://www.vertpaleo.org/education/pastprofiles.cfm

2 StaNdardS for the eNGliSh laNGuaGe artS (SPoNSored By the NatioNal CouNCil of teaCherS of eNGliSh)

4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language

(e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a

variety of audiences and for different purposes.

5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use

different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with

different audiences for a variety of purposes.

8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources

(e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and

synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.

12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish

their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the

exchange of information).

3 NatioNal art StaNdardS

1. Content Standard: Understanding and applying media, techniques,

and processes

3. Content Standard:Choosing and evaluating a range of subject

matter, symbols, and ideas

NatioNal SCieNCe StaNdardS

CONTENT STANDARD G: As a result of activities in grades 5-8, all

students should develop understanding of:

• Science as a human endeavor--Experiences in which students actu-

ally engage in scientific investigations provide the background for

developing an understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry, and

will also provide a foundation for appreciating the history of science

described in this standard.

1b

social studies3

Where in the World Can I Find a Paleo Animal? Students are often excited by the paleo world, but do not realize that this “world” is the same world they live in. It is important to show that their world and the world that housed these strange swimming and crawling creatures are one in the same, only separated by time, not by place. One way to do this is to use some of the incredible resources that are found on the Internet.

Assign each student or group of students (or allow them to choose) an organism that is described in the book. Next, have them use the following Web site to find out more about the geologic time period that Bradley describes in his entry on the particular animal.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/timeform.html

Once the student has navigated to this site they need to se-lect the specific time period or era that the organism lived in. This will bring up a page with a paragraph or two describing the period or era. They can then select one of three buttons located on the bottom of this Web site: “Stratigraphy” (the layers of the earth that contain fossils from this time period), “Ancient Life” (detailed information about what lived during this time and what the conditions were), and “Localities” (a world map with areas in the world where layers and fossils of this time period have been found). This last button will bring up a page showing the location in their world where evidence of these organisms can be found and this is where they need to go for this project. You may want to provide copies of a world map for them to label, or have a classroom-sized map for the entire class to label. Each student or group can then take the remainder of the class on a “field trip” to their Paleo World.

4 NatioNal CouNCil for the SoCial StudieS NatioNal StaNdardS

2. time, Continuity and Change.

• Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for

the study of the ways human beings view themselves in and over time.

8. Science, Technology and Society

• Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for

the study of relationships among science, technology, and society.

about the author

Tim Bradley has been fascinated by prehistoric animals from a young age, when he filled many sketch pads with drawings of dinosaurs and other creatures that lived millions of years ago. Today, as a professional artist, Tim has created hun-dreds of paleo illustrations for Web sites, toys, and exhibits in his signature colorful style with a realistic edge.

about the author of this guide

This guide was prepared by Richard Benz, educational consultant.

for more activities, teacher’s guides, and information visit: www.chroniclekids.com

To request information on the author’s availability for events or to request promotional materials, please e-mail: kids@chroniclebooks.com