Kids Book Page
North American Opossum
Final Page
Project Summary
For this project, we first were paired into a group of four with three high school students and one kindergarden student. Then, each kindergarden student choose a native animal or plant that they wanted to learn about. Jake, my buddy, choose the North American Opossum. My group and I researched the species and created a lesson plan to teach our buddy all about the North American Opossum. We taught him information such as what it eats, what its predators are, and where it lives. To make it easier for him to see, we made a book page that included the animals habitat (California Sycamore), its food (California Wild Grape), and one of its main predators (bobcat). We wanted to teach our buddy about the North American Opossum by displaying the information in a way that makes sense to him. Because he is still learning how to read, we kept the text very limited on the page and tried to express the main ideas visually.
It was really fun to be part of the process of teaching Jake. I loved watching him discover new information that was so fascinating to him. I also learned a lot about communication through this process, because I kept needing to remind myself what my buddy was capable of and structuring all interactions based on that. Because my buddy was especially energetic, I tried to make our lessons very engaging. One example of this is when we taught him that opossums 'play dead' by acting it out. He had a lot of fun pretending to be an opossum and playing dead to escape the scary bobcat. Overall it was quite an exciting experience to teach a young person about the natural world. I loved seeing him connect with something that he didn't even know existed before this, it gives me hope for the natural world in the future.
It was really fun to be part of the process of teaching Jake. I loved watching him discover new information that was so fascinating to him. I also learned a lot about communication through this process, because I kept needing to remind myself what my buddy was capable of and structuring all interactions based on that. Because my buddy was especially energetic, I tried to make our lessons very engaging. One example of this is when we taught him that opossums 'play dead' by acting it out. He had a lot of fun pretending to be an opossum and playing dead to escape the scary bobcat. Overall it was quite an exciting experience to teach a young person about the natural world. I loved seeing him connect with something that he didn't even know existed before this, it gives me hope for the natural world in the future.