Before bringing the new pet to the classroom, I set up the tank and have the students do some inferencing about what the new pet will be. I used the follow activity sheet that I created to go with this lesson: New Pet Inferencing. We then tallied all of our guesses and created many different kinds of graphs using The Graph Club software that is on my school computer. After we were done graphing, we discussed what each of the animals we guessed would need and decided whether or not our habitat would be able to provide that for the animal. Surprisingly, the students did a great job making their inferences and had it down to 3 possibilities: fish, turtle, or frog. The most votes were for turtle. That's when I revealed that it was a TURTLE! They were so excited.
So, today was the big day. We had off from school yesterday and today due to the Rosh Hashanah holiday, but I was able to go in today to get some work done. I picked up our new pet this morning before going in.
Meet Sheldon
He's an African Sideneck turtle. When I first put him in his habitat, he was a bit scared. I placed him on his basking platform. He promptly slid off backwards and went to hide underneath the platform. I then placed some food inside and he came out to grab it. After a while, he began exploring more of his new home. He loves to swim around and dig in the rocks. He also enjoyed laying under "the waterfall" (aka the filter). The kids are going to be so excited when they meet him tomorrow!
