ASSESSMENT GRADE MADNESS: Let the Summer Post begin!

It's Summer time here in Tennessee, which means it is abnormally hot!! I missed you all!
However, it being to hot to go outside means, I get to post more of this years shenanigans.

As, you prep for next year maybe these ideas over the next couple of weeks will strike your fancy, or maybe you will just sip Mai Tai's at the beach. Which ever is fine with me ;)

So one of the Tennessee State Science Standards is to understand human and natural disasters impact on the environment. Well, I found that my students understood that humans impact the environment, but the vocabulary in some of the questions and answers in the sample questions in the state assessment really throw them for a loop.

So, there is a lab called Oh Deer;
link to original lab: http://arvinapes.weebly.com/oh-deer-lab.html
It is a study in population, and I thought the questions could be easily modified to focus on vocabulary and help my students towards mastery of this standard.

Well, this activity requires a lot of space, and THUNDERSTORMS ruined my life because we needed to go outside!!! or so I thought!

I modified the lesson into an indoor playable table top game, and the kids ate it up!!

Game set up: (all was just typed and printed on card stock)
Each student gets a set of deer (you can determine the number I did 12)

A game board that has three survival needs (food, water, and shelter)

The group gets a set of scenario cards

1. At the beginning of each rounds the students must put all there deer out on the game board choosing how many deer need water, food, and shelter)

2. the students must put at least one deer on each of the needs unless they have less than 5 deer; then they may distribute as the choose.

3. Once all cards are placed. The reader for the round draws and reads a scenario card.
Sample Scenario Card:
Oh Deer!

A local farm has used pesticides that have leaked into the local river and poisoned the water. All deer that drank water this turn have died.

4. The students then take all the deer that have "died," and move them to the side.

5. Students repeat steps 1-4 until all, but one player (the winner) has deer left.

Before the students played the game I asked them to take down observations in their Science notebooks about what happened to the deer in terms of quantity and well as how they died.