EDU251 Thematic Unit Plan

Name: Daniel Ray

Date: 10/30/23

Unit Title (must include the topic): The Jungle

Grade Level: 1st Grade

1) Broad Unit Understandings/Goals:

• Students will learn about the ongoings in the Jungle.
• Students will use the Jungle as a means to understand important concepts.

2) Unit Questions:
ELA: How are sentences formed?
Math: How are mathematical objects measured?
Science: What are the things we see in the jungle?

3) State/Common Core Standards (obtained from PDESAS):

• 3.1 1.A.1 - Categorize living and nonliving things by external characteristics.
• 3.1 1.A.5 – Identify and describe plant parts and their functions.
• 3.1 1.A.9 – Participate in investigations about living and/or nonliving things to answer a
question or to test a prediction.
• 3.1 1.B.1 - Grow plants from seed and describe how they grow and change. Compare to
adult plants.
• 2.2 1.A.2 - Understand and apply properties of operations and the relationship between
addition and subtraction.
• 1.4 1.F - Demonstrate a grade appropriate command of the conventions of standard English
grammar, usage, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.

4) Learning Objectives:
• Students will describe differences between plants.
• Student will identify the difference between living and non-living things in the Jungle.
• Students will apply properties of operations.
• Students will demonstrate a variety of words and phrases.

5) Description of Unit:
• This unit will be about the various things in the Jungle. Through this unit, students will
learn many of the 1st Grade standards for math, science, and ELA. This will be done by
incorporating jungle ongoings into the standards that need to be met. Students will gain a
broad understanding of the Jungle while developing important skills in these 3 areas.
They will do this through various lessons and activities that relate directly and indirectly
to the jungle. This includes going on a field trip, doing projects, doing crafts, and many
other in class activities.

6) Introduction
The jungle is a thematic unit that can be used to teach 1st graders about a part of
EDU251 Thematic Unit Plan

the world that they may not yet be familiar with while adding new skills and enhancing
previously learned ones. This unit is important because it contains many different activities
and lessons that are beneficial to students. They will learn through different activities that
include playing, experiences, and projects. Some of the activities that the students will be
doing are growing their own jungle plant in the classroom, going on a field trip to the zoo to
learn more about nature and animals, and acting out their classmates’ animal poems.
Learning about the world around them is very important for children as they begin to grasp
the world around them. So, the jungle, and these activities, will be very beneficial to the
students in the classroom.
The first activity, that incorporates a project, is growing their own jungle plant. In
the lesson leading into this activity, students will learn how to identify if something is living
or nonliving. Following this they will learn about different leaf types and various plants.
Once they display concrete and repeatable understanding in this area, each student will be
given a cup of soil. After they have received their cup, they will each individually apply their
learned knowledge by identifying pictures of plants laid out on the table. Once the students
correctly identify a plant, they will receive a packet of seeds to bury in their soil. The
students will then learn how to water their new plant and be able to observe its growth over
the next week. This will give the children a hands-on science project that not only teaches
them about plants, living things, and the jungle, but also how things grow in the ground and
the way life is created. This will set the class up for a few follow-up lessons about growth.
The second activity that we will discuss is going on a field trip to the zoo. Before
going to the zoo, the students will have a lesson about different habitats and animals we
find in the jungle. Once the students have this background knowledge, they will be able to
strengthen it in person in this experienced-based activity. 1st grade is a very common
grade for students to go to zoo. They will be able to see all the different animals in real life
and apply the information they learned about habitats. In addition, students may be able to
learn from an expert that works at the zoo to add to their knowledge base. Not only will
this field trip help students to put their classroom knowledge into practice and perspective,
but they will have fun spending the day at such an exciting place while letting their
imagination run wild.
The last activity to be mentioned is incorporated into a language arts lesson on
poems. This activity will be play-based and encourage movement in the classroom. After
the students learn about different poems and how to form poems, they will be able to
demonstrate their knowledge by creating their own jungle poem. Their poems will be 5
lines long and each line must contain a movement that a jungle animal does. For example,
EDU251 Thematic Unit Plan

“Just like a monkey, everyone jumped around!” Every student will have an opportunity to
share their poem with the class, so we have several minutes of movement and play.
Through play, the students will be able to recall the various ways animals in the jungle
move. They will not only get to play and have fun, but they will also learn how to use their
listening skills and how to create a poem.
Through all of these activities, the students will gain concrete skills that will help
them in many areas of their learning. Playing, experiencing, and doing are some of the best
ways for 1st graders to learn fundamental skills in the classroom. Throughout the jungle
unit students will be able to hit all of these categories and many more, while learning
valuable things about the world around them.

Thematic Graphic Plan

Reading Writing
Science
“Where the Wild Things “Write a postcard from
the jungle to your family.” “Learn about different
Are” leaves.”
“Game: Write as many
“Good night, Gorilla” “Grow your favorite
animals as you can in 2
minutes.” jungle plant in class.”

Social Studies Theme Math

“Learn about different “Make a Jungle path throughout
the classroom, students count
homes/habitats that The Jungle!! how many animals they see
animals live in.” along the trail.”
“Learn about different “Add and subtract using bananas
to feed the monkeys.”
Jungle environments.”

P.E./Movement Art Music

“Learn and imitate how
jungle animals move.”
“4 corners but you can only
move like a jungle animal.”
“Make binoculars to
discover the jungle.”
“Paint an animals face
on a paper plate.”
“Learn the song, ‘There are
so Many Animals’ by the
Wiggles.”
“Preform a short musical
about animals and their
sounds.”

Other areas to consider: Community or Pop Culture, IEP goals (gifted, IDD, SLD, etc.)
Literature, History, Technology

*History focuses on the people and human contributions that led to historical (past) events.

*Social Studies encompasses history (past events) and focuses on human society. Social
Studies also includes geography, civics, economics, and sociology.