Preview · the opening missionRead this to the class:
A Weddell seal slides off the ice in Antarctica into water colder than the inside of a fridge. She hunts for half an hour, then climbs out and lies in the wind. A person in that water would be in danger within minutes. On the other side of the planet, in the Sahara, it is 45 °C at midday, and a fennec fox is already asleep in a cool burrow. Both animals keep their bodies at about the same temperature, between 36 and 39 °C. Your team's job: find out how animals keep heat in where it is cold and let heat out where it is hot.
Teams of three, with rotating jobs: Lead (handles the glove or thermometers), Timer (counts seconds and minutes), Recorder (writes and draws).
Look inside the PDF
Sample pages, stamped “preview”. The download is the clean, full lesson.
In the full lesson PDF
- Predict (5–10 min)
- Hunt (20 min)
- Reveal (10–15 min)
- Act (10 min)
- Background for the teacher
- Assessment
- Student sheet
- Worksheet: Label it
- Worksheet: Try it at home
On the student sheet
- My prediction
- Glove results
- Wet and dry results
- My animal
- Exit ticket
- Label it
- Try it at home
US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white. The student sheet is on its own page, ready to photocopy.
Free with an account (any 3 lessons), or US$19 / C$25 for all 4 lessons in this unit.
What students show by the end
- Describes results
- Explains temperature control
- Argues with evidence
From the lesson’s rubric, which scores each one as not yet, getting there or got it.
Questions teachers ask
How long does “How do animals stay warm in the sea and cool in the desert?” take?
50–60 min. Group size: teams of 3, rotating through two stations.
How much prep does it need?
30 minutes, best the day before. Make 4 blubber gloves: spoon about 500 mL (2 cups) of vegetable shortening, white cooking fat or petroleum jelly into a large freezer bag, push a second bag inside it, and squish the fat into an even layer about 1 cm (1/2 in) thick all around the inner bag. Fold the tops together and tape them closed with duct tape so the fat can't escape. Make 4 'bare gloves' the same way with no fat. In a hot room, keep the gloves in the fridge until class. Just before class, fill 4 tubs with ice and cold water, and set up the wet-and-dry station (see steps 5 to 7).
What materials do I need?
Large zip-top freezer bags, about 4 L (1 gal); vegetable shortening, white cooking fat or petroleum jelly; duct tape; tubs or buckets of ice and cold water, deep enough to cover a hand; alcohol-filled thermometers; paper towel or cotton wool, cut into 5 cm (2 in) squares; and 5 more. Cost: about $20 for a class of 30 (fat and freezer bags), plus thermometers.
Which curriculum standards does it cover?
NGSS (US): 4-PS3-2 and 4-LS1-1. It also matches England National Curriculum, Year 2 and Cambridge Primary Science, Stages 4 and 6 (not endorsed by Cambridge).
What’s in the lesson PDF?
A teacher guide that walks you through predict, hunt, reveal, act, background for the teacher and assessment, then a student sheet (“My prediction”, “Glove results”, “Wet and dry results”, “My animal”, “Exit ticket”, “Label it” and “Try it at home”) on its own page, ready to photocopy. It’s US Letter and prints cleanly in black and white.
Can I try it for free?
Yes. A free account includes any 3 full lessons of your choice, and this can be one of them. After that, this unit is US$19 (C$25) for all 4 lessons, yours to keep, or every lesson is US$79 (C$109) a year.