Levittown Students Explore Animal Survival Skills

From Levittown Schools: Northside Elementary School students in Marlena Leung’s third-grade class visited the Levittown Memorial Education Center’s Outdoor Learning Center on Nov. 28 to further students’ research abilities and explore animal behaviors.

Facilitated by Outdoor Learning Center teacher Jessica Mills, the class focused on determining if animal groups or individuals are better when gathering and defending their food. Through two engaging outdoor activities, the students had the opportunity to put their predictions to the test.

Using plastic toy food with numbers labeled on them to signify how long an animal would survive on the item, the students were identified as an animal group or an individual animal. For the first activity, the food was sorted into bins outside where the students competed to pick up the most food items to survive. Back in the classroom, the class discussed their findings and charted their data on a bar graph. For the second activity, the students returned outside but instead of competing for food, some were assigned as defenders to stand by the bins and protect the food. This helped the students determine if defending as a group or as an individual is better when an animal tries to survive in the wild. They then discussed the trends that were found in each activity. As a special treat, the class also stopped by the Outdoor Learning Center’s pond where Mills spotted a frog. Each student had the opportunity to get an up- close look at the creature before heading back to Northside.


Photos courtesy of the Levittown Schools