Session 1: Investigating Animals

from Molly of Denali - Family & Community Learning 2011-2012

by MilpitasInfo.com

Session 4: Celebrating Family Traditions

Session 1

INVESTIGATING ANIMALS

Courtesy of KET

“Live Carefully — Your Actions Have Consequences”

Investigating Animals: Goals and Focus

Learning Goals

In each session, families will engage in experiences that support the primary MOLLY OF DENALI informational text learning goal:

To use informational text they access and/or create to meet their needs and wants, including to help them solve real-world problems, to satisfy their curiosity,to take advantage of opportunities, to teach others and to accomplish tasks.

Each of the four workshop sessions also supports a secondary learning goal. For session 1, it is choosing the right text for the right purpose.

NOTE

The informational text learning goals are concepts that are meant to help facilitators guide families’ explorations but do not need to be explicitly stated to families. Families should be focused on the experience of using and creating informational text.

Courtesy of Maryland Public Television

Courtesy of KET

This Session’s Molly Story

“Suki’s Bone” explains how artifacts can be displayed in museums and how placards are used to convey information about the artifacts. Families will create an artifact (animal sculpture) and a museum placard about an animal in their community for the museum exhibit.

This Session’s Artifact:

A sculpture and placard about a local animal.

Session Priorities

Families will: • Learn about informational text and ways we use it every day. • Use field guides to investigate and gather information about a local animal. • Create an artifact and a museum placard about the animal. • Develop and strengthen positive attitudes toward accessing, using, and creating informational text.

Alaska Native Value

Introduce the Alaska Native value of “Live carefully – your actions have consequences’’ to center and ground the experience of this session’s workshop. Throughout the center activities, encourage families to discuss how we can live more carefully and protect local animals and their environment. Invite families to discuss how the Alaska Native value connects with their own family and community values. Encourage families to observe and discuss living alongside animals in their communities and being careful and thoughtful about how we interact and take care of the natural environment around us.

Concepts/vocabulary to incorporate throughout the workshop:

Informational Text: Text whose main purpose is to convey information. A text can be written words, images, oral language, videos, websites, etc. We can use informational texts to solve everyday problems, satisfy our curiosity, take advantage of opportunities, teach others and complete tasks.

Value: An idea or guiding principle we practice that is important and meaningful to our family or community.

Artifact: An item made by humans that has special meaning.

Observe: To use all five senses to gather information about people, objects or places; to notice.

Investigate: To use our senses to make observations and gather information to explore a topic or problem.

Field Guide: A book that identifies and provides facts about wildlife such as birds and animals and the natural environment such as plants and minerals.

Museum Placard: A type of label used in a museum to share important information about a museum object.

Courtesy of KET

Photo Courtesy of Austin PBS

Investigating Animals: At-a-Glance

Eat (25 minutes)

Welcome families. Sign everyone in, pass out conversation placemats and name tags and invite everyone to eat.

Show the full episode story, “Suki’s Bone.”

Have everyone introduce themselves and introduce the structure, goals and focus of the Family & Community Learning workshop series.

Preview the workshop.

Explore

(40 minutes)

Introduce the concept of informational text and its purpose with a selection of everyday examples. (See appendix for a list of suggested examples.)

Watch a clip of “Suki’s Bone,” which the families have viewed in full before attending the workshop.

Introduce and discuss the idea of creating a mini-museum exhibit.

Invite families to choose an animal, distribute “Molly & Me: Museum Planners” and set up the museum placard activity.

PLAY

Facilitate family learning and play at three centers in the following sequence:

1. Molly’s Research & Writing Center

Families will look through kid-friendly field guides about local animals to find information about the animal they chose for the museum exhibit. Families will gather information and take notes in their Molly & Me Museum

Planner. Families will then create an animal sculpture with a museum placard based on the information that they gather.

2. Tooey’s Make & Take Center

Families make a “spotting-scope” to take home to help explore their natural environment.

3. Trini’s Digital Media Center

Families play the “Fish Camp” game found in the PBS

KIDS GAMES and MOLLY OF DENALI app. They can also watch the full MOLLY OF DENALI story, “Suki’s Bone,” if they didn’t view it ahead of time.

TIP

To manage the number of families at each center, you may consider staggering or rotating families through the centers. Families will, most likely, need to spend a larger portion of their time at Molly’s Research & Writing Center compared with the other centers.

Courtesy of Maryland Public Television

Extension Ideas

If outdoor space is available, incorporate an outdoor classroom as part of “Molly’s Research & Writing Center.” Lead families outside to explore and observe local nature. This can also help families choose an animal to include in the museum exhibit.

Load tablets with the free Seek by iNaturalist app. Recommend to families to download Seek by iNaturalist if they have smartphones. Through image recognition, the app can help families identify and learn information about plants and animals in their community.

Connect with local Indigenous groups that may have informational text and knowledge to share about animals, birds, insects and/or the surrounding environment.

Photo Courtesy of Austin PBS

Bring families back together to share their contribution to the community museum exhibit: a museum placard with their chosen animal sculpture.

Preview the next workshop.

Share take home materials: MOLLY OF DENALI field guide and digital resource postcard.

Goodbye until next time!

Materials

Safety Note: Items used throughout the FCL can pose safety and choking hazards (straws, rubber bands) and/or allergic reactions (fish crackers, latex balloons) for young kids. Bring this to grown-ups’ attention and encourage adults to provide careful supervision of kids when using these items.

Eat

Name tags

Meal

Conversation placemats

Episode story, “Suki’s Bone”

A bag with a variety of familiar examples of informational text:

Map or Globe

Recipe

Explore

Kid-friendly field guide

Kid-friendly biographies

Food box/container with nutritional info

Board game instructions

TIP

Gather field guides of animals and nature from your local library. If guides about local animals aren’t readily available, consider regional or state field guides.

A tablet loaded with Google maps and directions, a weather app, the website of the local library, etc.

(See appendix for additional examples)

Computer, projector and speakers

“Suki’s Bone” video

Photos of local animals (8” x 10” or larger), one for each family

Courtesy of WCNY

PLAY

Molly’s Research & Writing Center

A selection of kid-friendly print and/or digital local field guides of local animals and nature books

Modeling/air-dry clay Molly & Me Museum Planner and pencil

MOLLY OF DENALI coloring pages Crayons

Tooey’s Make & Take Center

DIY “spotting-scope” instruction sheets Modeling/air-dry clay Cardboard tubes and rolls

Construction or butcher paper String

Tape

Glue Markers and crayons Child-safe scissors

Additional craft supplies such as pom poms, glue, glitter and stickers

TIP

Consider reusing kid-friendly eating utensils as carving and modeling tools to create animal sculptures.

Trini’s Digital Media Center

Computers or tablets with an open search browser and preloaded apps

Add child lock protection or enable parental controls on search browsers on tablets or desktop computers. Download

tablets with “Fish Camp” digital game from the PBS KIDS GAMES and Molly of Denali app and “Suki’s Bone” episode

Headphones Kid-friendly carving and modeling tools such as popsicle sticks, forks and spoons

Computer and projector

“Bird Sanctuary” video MOLLY OF DENALI field guide and digital resources postcard

TIP

To continue exploring beyond the workshop, families can download the free Seek by iNaturalist app on a smartphone or tablet. Through image recognition, the app can help families identify and learn information about plants and animals in their community. (See app details in the digital resource postcard.)

Investigating Animals: Workshop Rundown

Eat (25 minutes)

• As families arrive, invite them to get their food, start eating and use the placemats for conversation and activities. • Encourage families to notice the conversation prompts related to the image and the Alaska Native value on their placemats. Point out the conversation placemats and encourage families to talk about what they see and ask each other questions. • Show the full MOLLY OF DENALI story, “Suki’s Bone.” • Clean up meal and gather together as a whole group.

The placemats are designed to engage kids while the family gets settled and enjoys their meal. The prompts on the placemat are tied to each week’s theme/topic and can be used by families and facilitators to spark conversation. If you plan to screen the episode during “Eat,” allow ample time for families to engage in the placemats before showing the episode story.

TIP

If time is a constraint, model questions for a picture walk with the placemats.

TIP

Encourage families to eat upon arrival. This will ensure there is adequate time for introductions and to acquaint families with the FCL model.

TIP

Use a strategy, such as “Hands in the air, eyes on me,” throughout the sessions when you need to regain the families’ attention. Being consistent will reinforce the routine.

Eat (25 minutes)

Welcome

This first session is important as you kick off FCL and work to establish your community. During this session, everyone will get to know one another, the space, and the tools and tech that will be used throughout the experience. This session should focus on setting a positive tone for having fun and engaging with informational text through play.

TIP

Create a friendly environment by playing music and having facilitators greet participants as they arrive.

TIP

We recommend having one facilitator for every four families to ask guiding questions and assist families at centers.

TIP

There may be a wide range of language and literacy abilities among grown-up participants. Gather this information during the recruitment process and make sure you have facilitators, including bilingual facilitators, to support and guide grown-ups as they gather and use various resources. Some examples include:

• In what language(s) do you communicate with your kids? • What language(s) are you most comfortable reading and writing?

Introductions and Preview

Starting with you, go around the room and have each family briefly introduce themselves.You may want to follow the Alaska Native custom of introducing the names of each family member, the name of parents and grandparents (including those not attending the session), and where each person comes from. This can be a powerful way to acknowledge families’ rich histories.

Alaska Native custom of introductions:

Share as much or as little as you feel comfortable. • Your name • The origin or meaning of your name • Your parents’/wise Elders’ names and where they grew up • Your grandparents’/wise Elders’ names and their cultural background • Anything else that you want to share as part of your story

Families come in many different forms. You may have grandparents, aunts, neighborhood friends, guardians and other wise Elders with kids at the workshop. As the facilitator, create a welcoming environment that allows families to share what they are comfortable sharing, even if that means nothing at all. Ensure that all types of families are welcome and what they do or don’t share is respected.

Another approach to introductions is to ask kids to talk about the “stars” in their lives or wise Elders they look up to and are close with, including the grown-up who attended the FCL workshop with them. (See Appendix C.)

TIP

Introductions take time. Consider using the Alaska Native Introduction frame with families for about 5-10 minutes per person. If time is a constraint, consider having families introduce themselves in small groups, and switch groups at the next session. Another way for families to introduce themselves is to use the Stars in My Life handout to share about the caring people in their lives. If you choose to use this framework, consider at least introducing yourself with the Alaska Native Introduction as an example.

TIP

Introduce land acknowledgements during family introductions.

After introductions:

• Encourage families to share if they have watched MOLLY OF DENALI. • Ask families to share what they know about the show and characters and/or why they chose to attend the Family & Community Learning Workshop. • Give a brief introduction to MOLLY OF DENALI. You might say, “MOLLY OF DENALI is a PBS KIDS series set in a fictional village near Denali in Alaska. It’s called Qyah (pronounced Kye-yah).”

The main character is 10-year-old Molly Shahnyaa (Shaah-nyah) Mabray. Molly and her family are Gwich’in/Koyukon/Dena’ina (Guh-wich-in/Ko-yu-Kohn/Den-ah- in-ah). These groups represent some of the eleven Alaska Native tribes that live in South Central and Interior Alaska. Alaska Natives are people who are indigenous to or originally from Alaska. Molly’s mother, Layla, is a pilot and her father, Walter, is a wilderness guide. Together they run the Denali Trading Post, which is a kind of store that sells different tools, supplies and materials for the community. Molly’s grandfather, Grandpa Nat, is a volcanologist — someone who studies volcanoes. (You may also want to explain that a volcanologist is a type of geologist, someone who studies Earth’s layers of soil and rock.) Molly’s two best friends are Tooey and Trini. Molly also has a dog named Suki.

• Introduce PBS KIDS Family & Community Learning, a series of interactive sessions that invite families to explore, make and play together using PBS KIDS media and hands-on activities.

Courtesy of WFSU Public Media

Describe the structure of each session and its four parts—Eat, Explore, Play and Share:

Eat: Families will share a meal and have time to get to know one another. Explore: Grown-ups and kids will build knowledge about a topic. Play: Families will notice, wonder and connect as they visit a series of play-based centers and engage in hands-on and digital activities together as a family. They will apply their knowledge about the topic and develop skills in understanding the purpose of and creating informational texts. Share: Families will share discoveries and connections to their everyday lives and view a short video (interstitial) of real kids using and creating informational text.

Over the course of the four workshops, each family will research and create displays about their community to share with others, including information about the people, places, animals and traditions that are special to the families. The display will be their own community “mini- museum.” Set up the purpose of the mini-museum with families by saying something like, “Molly’s Elders gave her the native name of Shahnyaa (Shaan-nyah) which means ‘she informs me.’” Molly loves to inform and share about the people, places and things in Qyah and her surrounding community. Like Molly, we are going to share information about our community. We will create a mini-museum with information and artifacts about what is important and special about us and our community to share with others.”

It is important to use and create informational texts for a clear purpose. Emphasize that in each workshop, families will be creating different pieces of information to help others learn about our community.

TIP

Preview today’s topic—Investigating Animals—where families will learn about animals from informational texts such as field guides and online websites, choose an animal that lives in their community, and create a museum placard to share information about their animal artifact.

At today’s FCL, families will:

• Explore informational text and understand how we use it to learn and share information. Play and learn together at hands-on and digital activity centers in a sequence:

1. Molly’s Research & Writing Center - Kids will use field guides to gather and record information about a local animal in their Museum

Planner. The families will use their research to create a museum placard along with an animal sculpture for the mini-museum. 2. Tooey’s Make & Take Center - Families will make “spotting-scopes” to take home to continue to explore animals in their natural environment. 3. Trini’s Digital Media Center - Families can play the “Fish Camp” game found in the PBS KIDS GAMES and MOLLY OF DENALI app and view the session’s MOLLY OF DENALI story, “Suki’s Bone.”

• Share about and add the animal sculpture and museum placard they created about a local animal to the community museum exhibit.

Explore (25 minutes)

As families wrap up eating, introduce the Alaska Native value on the placemats:

“Living carefully—your actions have consequences.” Invite discussion by asking families questions such as: • What does this mean to you? • How can we live carefully within our family and the world around us? • What are some ways we can live carefully to take care of plants, birds and animals around us?

Introduce Informational Text

Explain that the goal of this workshop series is to explore how we use information to help us learn and discover new things and share our learning with others. We use informational texts every day!

Intro Ideas:

Invite participants to pick an example out of your bag of informational texts, one at a time. Ask: • What is it? • What kind of information does it tell us? • How/when/why do we use it?

Ask participants to stand up, raise a hand, or do a dance if they have:

• Used a map • Used a dictionary • Looked at a bus schedule • Read the newspaper • Read instructions for a game

Explain that informational texts help us solve everyday problems, satisfy our curiosity, take advantage of opportunities, teach others, and complete tasks. It can also help us learn about our community.

Gather families together and show them a field guide. This can be any field guide about animals in your area. Describe what a field guide is and what it does. Prompt kids to make observations of the field guide.

You could ask questions such as:

• What do you think you can learn from this type of book? • Have you seen or used a field guide before? • How will this field guide help you learn about animals you have seen in the community?

After watching the video, ask questions such as:

• What Alaskan animal did they see in the museum? • What information did they learn? • How did they learn this information? • Explain key vocabulary: ‘artifact’ and ‘placard.’ (See page 8 for definitions.) • What animals do we see in our community?

TIP

Insects are animals too! Encourage kids to share about all kinds of animals found in their community.

Co-Viewing the Video

View the MOLLY OF DENALI episode “Suki’s Bone” (highlight clip from 3:50-5:30). Provide some background information about the video to help orient the group to what they are about to watch, such as, “When Molly’s dog Suki finds a bone with special markings on it, Molly, Tooey, and Grandpa Nat visit a museum to find out if it is an important artifact. They learn how placards help give us important information about what we see in a museum.” Ask families to pay attention to the museum placards and what information they convey in the video.

Encourage families to think about the Alaska Native value of living carefully in relation to the video. You can ask:

• Why is it important to learn about animals in our community? • What are some ways we can live carefully so that animals in our community can live safely in their homes or nests?

Molly and Tooey went to the museum to learn more about their community and the natural environment around them. We’re going to create a museum to help others learn about our community and the natural environment around us!

Introduce the artifact families will be making together for the community museum exhibit: a sculpture and a museum placard of a local animal. Show the note-taking pages and template for the museum placard in the Museum Planner. Discuss what type of information is helpful and important to include in a museum placard.

Photo Courtesy of Austin PBS You can say, “To go along with our animal sculpture artifact, we will research and gather information to create a museum placard that explains more about the animal. Our museum placard will include a label that tells us the name or type of animal and some important facts about it. These facts may include what the animal looks like, where it lives, what it eats and interesting facts about how it survives in nature. The sculpture and museum placard you create will be added to our community museum exhibit so that visitors to our community or people who live here can learn about the kinds of animals that live in our community.”

Preview the three centers for families and share the sequence of centers to visit first and last. Show families the example of Molly modeling a placard in the Museum Planner. Families will take notes in the Museum Planner before creating their own animal placard. Invite each family to choose an animal photo from your collection for their sculpture and placard.

PLAY (45 minutes)

Families can move between the three centers at their own pace, moving to the next activity when their child is ready. They are always welcome to revisit centers.

Prior to the workshop, make a sample “spottingscope” for Tooey’s Make & Take Center and a sample museum placard with an accompanying sculpture for the community museum exhibit so grown-ups see a model of the finished products.

TIP

Some groups may need gentle reminders to transition if they haven’t already done so. Try verbal reminders, ringing a bell, tapping a drum or using a projected countdown timer, especially if space is limited and families need to move at the same time.

Courtesy of Alaska Public Media

TIP

Add a “Kid Corner” for younger siblings and/or kids that need a break from all of the environmental stimuli. The corner could be part of the “Research & Writing Center” or as a separate center. Include age-appropriate books and MOLLY OF DENALI coloring pages and coloring utensils. Play Molly of Denali, Alaska Native or local Indigenous music in the background as families work on their activities. However, careful of overstimulating sound at Trini’s Digital Media Center since the digital games will also have audio.