All Modules 11-Animal Kingdom - Module 2 | Page 17

17 and build a deeper understanding of how weight and numbers are an essential part of our everyday life. Making connections is essential to building critical and analytical thinking skills. Challenge them: are humans the heaviest since we are at the top of the food chain? Social Skills: Think Pair Share is an excellent option for this domain. At this age children are well-adapted to the dynamic of a group setting. We are promoting deeper understanding of selfhelp skills, independence, responsibility, and problem-solving skills: all part of the development of social skills through collaboration and group settings. Citizenship: At this stage children have already established their place in the world and are more interested in what else they can do to contribute (whether positively or negatively) in order to yield new and interesting reactions. By understanding their place in the classroom, children gain an understanding beyond that, their place in the environment. Children at this age are not content just hearing anymore, they want to do and explore in order to discover. Allow them the opportunity to see in action the process of how animal life begins, evolves, and the natural flow of things. Videos are extremely helpful in aiding in their comprehension as we are very visual. Help them make connections with these animals and where they have seen both that animal before, and that behavior they are eliciting. This instills in them a deeper understanding of citizenship because it forces them to go beyond the scope of just what they are seeing and develop their abstract thought to interpret the observed behaviors in order to respond to the question.