Animals and Their Young

# ANIMALS AND THEIR YOUNG All Creatures Wild and Juvenile **Learning Age**: 5 - 11 **Subject Links:** Biology, Life Science, Animal Biology, Natural Science **Learning Objectives** *1. Recognize similarities and differences between animals and their young*{.info} *2. Explain how young animals’ instincts and parental protection enhance survival chances*{.info} **Playlist Overview** This collection of short 360° videos is designed to help your students learn about animal offspring and the unique ways that early life unfolds in different species. With these immersive videos your students will encounter a whole cast of adorable animal inhabitants. Using these VR activities to enhance your core lessons, your students can witness the wild beginnings of young animals, voyage across the different habitats where they learn to thrive, and discover the instincts and adaptations that enable living things to strive for independence. **Keywords:** Animals, offspring, reproduction, birth, baby, young, growth, adult, parent, pregnancy, egg, hatchling, species, life cycle, survival, mammal, bird, reptile, primate, traits **VR Resources:** These resources are all 360° videos and under one minute in duration, unless stated below. - **Galapagos Fur Seal** - **Australian Fur Seal Baby** - **Orangutan: Part 2** - **Chimps Being Curious: Part 3** - **Movie: Young & Wild** *(Approx 10 min. duration)* **Please note, videos from our WildWorld subscription are high quality and some files may be large. Please allow ample time to download.** *Tip: While in the headset, encourage your students to look up and all around them!* **Optional Additional Materials:** - **Movie Booklet: Young & Wild** **Before Your Experience** Before they meet the amazing array of animal offspring in these 360° video experiences, check your students’ prior knowledge of animals and their young. The following questions can be discussed in a group or as an individual task. Ask your students: - Have you ever seen a very young animal? How did you know? - What do you think happens to the young animals as they mature? - Can you name some baby animals you’ve seen before? What would we call a young dog, cow or kangaroo? *Tip: For higher learning levels, you can ask your students what they would call the young of a dolphin, dragonfly or seal.* **Suggested Activities** Here are some activity ideas to get you started using these VR resources in your classroom. These differentiated activities can be adapted for different learning ages and abilities. To help your students complete these activities and support their learning, you can also provide the **Movie Booklet: Young & Wild** # Core Knowledge{.objective .objective1} This activity develops the skill of observing and identifying animals in their natural habitat. Students should work individually or in pairs to write observation statements about the adult and juvenile seals. Tell them that they are posing as animal investigators; they need to watch the videos closely to write the statements. a) To get started, students should watch the short videos in their ClassVR headset: - **Galapagos Fur Seal** - **Australian Fur Seal Baby** Then, ask students to write down three differences they noticed between the adult and young seals’ appearance, behavior and environment. *Tip: Look for worthy adjectives and comparatives that indicate students understand the difference between offspring and adults. Responses might include: “The baby seal stayed in the rockpools,” “The adult seal is larger and the coat is smooth and shiny.”* b) Next, students should watch these two videos of young primates in the wild. Remind them to look up and all around to find the animals! - **Orangutan: Part 2** - **Chimps Being Curious: Part 3** Challenge students to identify three similarities between young primates and young humans. What behaviors or traits can they recognize? *Tip: Students might remark on the orangutan clinging to its mother for protection or the chimpanzee’s playful interaction with its peers.* Use the questions to help guide the activities: - Do the babies look like their parents? Will their size and colors change over time? - What do you think about the way the young animals move and behave? - Which one do you think is older, the baby orangutan or the baby chimpanzee? Why? # Demonstrating Understanding{.objective .objective2} In this fact-versus-fiction activity, your students must interpret statements about animal development to determine whether each is true or false. The idea is to watch the animals appearing in each short sequence of the movie and then discuss their attributes. You can present the entire ten-minute video to students or pause after each animal clip to allow them time to write and retrieve the information they need more easily. Ask students to watch the **Movie: Young & Wild** in their ClassVR headsets. Working in pairs, each student should devise three statements based on the young animals they observed in the video, which must be determined “true” or “false” by their partner. Their statements can target the same animal or three different ones. Guide students to focus on the physical appearance, behaviors or abilities of the animals. *Tip: Example statements might include, sea turtles are born knowing how to swim, baby pangolins can curl into a ball, or deer are born with spots on their fur to help them hide.* # Extended Learning{.objective .objective3} In this activity, your students should use their evaluation skills to rank animals according to various traits. This will challenge them to go beyond just observing the video and requires students to analyze the behaviors and qualities of the featured animals. Your students should watch the **Movie: Young & Wild**. Instruct them to rank the animals from the movie from lowest to highest, under four categories: Dependence on Parent, Mobility, Defenses and Survival Chances. Based on your classroom setup, either have students use their workbooks or collaborate as a class to arrange them on a display. Guide your students in this activity with these questions: - Which animals do you think are the most devoted parents? How does their care give the offspring a greater chance of survival? - Which ones would have some ability to survive on their own? *Tip: The most important aspect of this activity is for students to justify their opinions based on what they have understood from the video.* As an optional extension to this activity, students can create a drawing of a “Super Survivor”, an animal hybrid combining the best qualities they have witnessed in the video. For example, they might choose a sea turtle's independence, a chimpanzee's agility, or a pangolin's defensiveness. **Cross-Curricular Links** **Geography** Ask students to use the information provided in the accompanying fact files about the animals to research some of the primary threats to their numbers. They should write a short report summarizing their findings and explaining the reasons for its conservation status. **English Language** Ask students to write an emotive story titled “The Perilous Journey” about the dangers faced by a young animal. Suggestions might be a sea turtle’s race to the ocean or a fawn’s escape from the clutches of a predator. Their piece of writing should use sensory language and a strong narrative voice. # Activity Guide **Download the Activity Guide** [](https://avnfs.com/xBrTtbJBiwxsid3zBtjgH341Ps066zzpSm44zay6Y8c?size=1717549&type=application%2Fpdf&name=Animals+and+Their+Young-Wildworld+Activity+Sheet.pdf)