Teachers Corner

Things You will Find Here:

Cool stuff for learning at Frogland

has some of the teacher-preferred areas of this site outlined.

Activities and Teaching Programs

has some neat ideas and lesson outlines right here such as the Rainforest Study, Personal Usage of Water Study, the Rate Your Family Conservation Study, and Attitude Slip

Links to More Cool Ideas for Teaching Programs:

Here you'll find all kinds of lesson ideas. If you have some ideas of your own posted, please send them to me.
Biology/Science Studies has all kinds of Biology and Life Science study lesson ideas. Life Cycle class ideas are popular and there are even several Online Anatomy Classes are available for those who wish to spare a few frogs.
Environmental Studies such as lessons in recycling, litter, global warming and more. There are some great craft ideas here! There is also a whole section of Online Population Decline/Deformed Frogs Resources available.

Links to more Links

If you couldn't find something you were looking for here, these are some great starting points for more ideas.

Frogs In Your Classroom

If a live frog is an option for your classroom look to this section for links and info.

• Mini-Reports
  Create a cartoon or multi-panel comic strip or comic book showing how a particular frog uses an adaptation or how a frog egg develops into a frog.
• Life Stages
  Draw and describe each stage of a frog's metamorphosis.
  - Begin with the "parents" amplexus,
  - then the egg with the developing embryo,
  - the tadpole or pollywog larvae (three stages),
  - and finally the frog.
• Why should frogs be studied?
  Kids can discuss what sorts of reasons scientists might have for interest in some of the strange brooding behaviors (Gastric Brooding Frog), cold and heat adaptations (Cold Weather Frogs), and other protective adaptations.
  
• Why is having frogs in our environment important?
  Kids can discuss environmental impacts on their lives using the frog as an example of what happens when our environment is at risk.

• Creative Exercise:
  These could be used as a great lead-in for a classroom creative exercise, for example:
  Myths are made-up stories that tell how things came to be as they are. Work with a partner to write and illustrate a myth that explains how a frog or toad first developed one of its adaptations. (Example: "How the frog got its sticky tongue")
  Or, you could write a play, make costumes, and perform your myth. Or how about a puppet show?
  

• Environmental discussions.
  Kids can discuss what sorts of things they can do for helping take care of their environment. There are some examples listed in the "What YOU Can Do to Help" section.
  
• Try some classroom activities regarding the environment. Some examples are listed below.
  

Top
Personal Usage of Water Study
Brief Description:
Students monitor their personal water usage for a twenty four hour period. Students use this information to assess their personal impact on the local community.
Procedure:

1. Instruct students to keep track of the ways they use water directly for a twenty four hour period. (That is flushing the toilet, drinking, cooking, showering, etc..) You can also provide your students with a table for them to record their information.
2. After the students have collected their information, have them do the following analysis:
   Personal Total for twenty four hours (gallons or liters)
   Class Total for twenty four hours (gallons or liters)
   Average gallons or liters used per person in the class in 24 hours
   Total gallons or liters used by the class in a week, month, year
   
3. Following the calculations and analysis, discuss with the students ways that they might be able to cut their water usage down. Ask the students if they feel they have an impact on the environment.

Flushing a Toilet: 4-6 gallons
Shower: 5 to 15 gallons per minute
Filling a bathtub: 25-35 gallons
Clothes washer: 25-30 gallons per load
Dishwasher: 15 gallons per load
Running Faucet: 2 to 5 gallons per minute

1. Students graph data and calculations.
2. Discuss adaptations plants and animals make in their use of water.
3. Students keep track of their entire households use of water.
4. Students start a school water conservation program.

Top
Rate Your Family Conservation Study
Brief Description:
Students assess how environmentally aware their family is by a point system. Goal is to heighten awareness of environmental impact.
Procedure:
Students collect data on a point system. (points below are from a suggested example, an additional part of this could be for students to come up with an appropriate rating system.)

• If you recycle newspaper, used computer paper, and some junk mail, add 10 pts.
  
• If you picked up litter in the past week, add 5 pts. If you littered in any way. Subtract 20 pts.
  
• If you planted one or more trees in the past year, add 10 pts.
  
• If you drove your car (or had someone drive you) to destination fewer that two blocks away in the last week, subtract 20 pts.
  
• If you have taken your children to a natural setting, such as the woods, a stream or a mountain trail in the last month, add 10 pts.
  
• If you recycle aluminum cans and aluminum foil, add 10 pts.
  
• If you burn or bag your leaves or grass clippings, subtract 10 pts. If you compost, mulch, or leave you leaves or grass alone to decompose, add 5 pts.
  
• If you have a compost pile, add 10 pts.
  
• If you have a family vegetable garden, add 5 pts.
  
• If you have forgotten to turn off a light, television, or radio in an empty room today, subtract 10 pts.
  
• If you have purchased a product packaged in a foam container in the past week (that includes food from some fast food restaurants), subtract 5 pts.
  
• If you use both sides of a piece of paper before throwing it away, add 5 pts.
  
• If you recycle glass and plastic, add 10 pts.
  
• If you have volunteered your time for an environmental cause in the past year (such as paper drive, trash pick-up, etc.), add 10 pts.
  

90 points or above: Indeed you are a friendly family of the Earth!

80 to 89 points: You are a concerned family and doing OK.

70 to 79 points: Your family needs to make a plan and try harder.

Below 69: Your family is contributing to the problem. Top
Attitude Slip
Brief Description:
Here's a neat idea from Spencer Deal: 5th grade teacher at Mesa Grande Elementary, Hesperia, CA (aldeal@earthlink.net) It's a great way to patch differences and use frogs!
Procedure:

First you'll need a fun picture of a frog (How about the "Frog Eating Cricket" in the Doodle page?) for this project.
1. Get a photo or black line of a comical frog to put on the 3" x 3" piece of paper.
2. The slip reads "Frogs are lucky, they get to eat what bugs them".
3. At school the kids put what bothers them on the paper.
4. At the end of class, use the slip of paper to mend feelings etc.

Top
Froggin Around the world
Here's a fun idea! Gather a bag or box with the following: 1 stuffed frog, 1 disposable camera, and a list of instructions. Get the kids to send the frog out around the US, if not the world! Folks that get the frog should 1.) write a postcard and send it to the classroom, and 2.) take a photo with the stuffed frog, and send it on to the next lucky person to do the same. A couple of years ago, a 3rd grade class sent me such a package and it seemed like a neat way to get kids to learn about folks from other parts of the country. The instructions asked for me to write to the kids and send it forward...(and to be sure that the last person with the stuffed frog would send it back, along with the camera, to the classroom before classes ended)
ANIMAL WRITES LEAGUE : Smoochy the Frog Avatar This appears to be a webpage about one such traveling frog and his adventures in el paso with this 3rd grade classroom.

Top

FrogWeb.gov has a great selectionof Educational Resources and ideas for classroom fun!

Junior Detective Headquarters is a great site put together right here in Oregon at the Oregon Coast Aquarium which hosts this a section dedicated to activities teachers and parents can do with their kids. Specifically geared towards dissapearing frogs!

Our Friend - The Frog: A Webquest for Year 2 by Denise O'MaraWebquest for a Year 2 IT class in first term who are studying frogs with their class teacher. The children's skills at this level are limited, especially reading skills, but they are able to use a browser and print a webpage. The webquest format is used to teach the children how to retrieve information & record it, as well as revise some of their computer skills from Year 1.

Cool School Froggy Projects (The Leaping Pad) List of Links to classes who did frog projects at school and posted the results on the web!

Biology/Science Studies:

The Water Cycle For Kids Here's a bunch of lesson plans and ideas on water cycle studies.

VIRTUAL CREATURES This is an NSF funded research and development project. Their interdisciplinary team is exploring the educational potential of a new way of seeing living creatures and interacting with them. The foundation of this new way of seeing is a high resolution computerized three-dimensional visualization of an actual organism in its entirety, inside and out. They plan to create a library of virtual creatures designed for teaching. Students will be able to explore, visualize, touch, and change these creatures in ways that are impossible with real laboratory animals. Visit the site to see the virtual frog that they have begun to create.

Biological Rhythms (Grades 3-12) People have biological rhythms...what about other creatures? Many schools have classroom pets - a rat, hamster, fish or frog. If your class has a pet, study its behavior to see if you can determine any cycling patterns.

Make a Frog Sandwich Janet Bowersox. Nathan Hale High School, Seattle, WA. Type of Entry: individual project/lesson. Type of Activity: hands-on, modeling, group/cooperative learning (spontaneous or structured), dissection preview lesson. Target Audience: Life Science, Biology, Special needs - ESL, Special Education. For the students who ask, "Do we get to dissect in Biology?" or those who ask "Do we have to dissect in Biology?", the Frog Sandwich lets students choose how they will learn some comparative anatomy.
Required of students: Each student assembles a paper Frog Sandwich over a one week time period. They exchange frogs to check, correct, and "sign off" on each other's work. After completing the dissection of preserved frogs, students take a station lab practical exam. They are allowed to use their frog sandwich on the exam as an identification guide and they submit their Frog Sandwich as part of their exam.

Graphing Toad/Frog Respiration Laura Jensen. Yuma High School, Yuma, AZ. Type of Activity: Hands-on, Simulation, Inquiry lab, Authentic assessment, group/cooperative learning. Target Audience: Life Science, Biology, Advanced Biology/AP Biology, Anatomy, Physiology. This activity helps the students answer: Purpose of a control. The importance of care toward the experimental animal. The method of graphing the results.
Required of students: Ability to accurately measure length, mass, temperature. They must be previously exposed to the importance of observations.

Frogs: A Thematic Unit Plan Grade level: 2. The overall purpose of this interdisciplinary, thematic unit of study is to help young children learn more about the metamorphosis and development of an amphibian species as they become involved in a number of interdisciplinary lessons and activities over a three or four week period. The lessons and activities of the unit are specifically designed to help the children to develop related concepts as they gain an appreciation of ways frogs help our environment. The children will also have experiences in caring for animals, and they will have opportunities to express themselves through creative work in art, nusic, and movement activities.
Frog Metamorphosis: A Change For the Better Objective: to introduce students to the concept of metamorphosis as practiced by frogs.
Students color the life stages of the frog, cut out each stage and fold to make a complete animal. Suggestions for coloring are provided on the sheet. The fold will give the various life stages a three-dimensional look. Students use the completed cutouts to make a mobile to display the frog's life cycle.
Move the Desks! the pond's coming! Students become involved in learning about pond components, food chains, and the water cycle as they help construct the pond from a child's swimming pool.
ANIMAL LIFE CYCLES his is a unit in the LIFE SCIENCES. By doing these activities, students will learn that all living things are born, grow and change; consume water and food, and die. This process is commonly known as the LIFE CYCLE. Hands-on experiences as well as creative writing, art-related and cognitive activities are used to demonstrate the beauty and complexity of the transitions all of life must go through.
Appropriate for grades 3-8.

Online Anatomy Classes

Anatomy Classes (The Leaping Pad)

Environmental Studies:

Craft Exchange Crafts can be a great way to recycle computer and household waste while having fun and making something useful. This page features craft projects of all sorts, many of which incorporate recycling items in creating new ones.

Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle Make Shrinky-Dinks from Recycling Materials! This is part of a really cool website called The Thinking Fountain where various ideas are collected. look here to find all kinds of neat projects!

Candid Camera Activity (Grades K-3) language arts, art, photography. CONCEPT: Why is litter a problem? What can we do about it? OBJECTIVE: Students will appreciate the negative effects litter has on their community.

Discover Composting Organisms Activity - (Grades K-3) science. CONCEPT: What makes composting work? OBJECTIVE: To expose students to some of the organisms that carry out decomposition.

Let's Get Organized Activity - (Grades K-3) social studies, technology, home economics. CONCEPT: What needs to be done to organize a collection system for recyclables? OBJECTIVE: To teach organizational skills and involve youth in the planning of their school and home recycling project (if children participate they will have a vested interest in the program's success). To design a set-up for recyclables.

Ozone Action! K-5 Introduction - (Grade 5) Constructing new scientific knowledge. Introduction: In this activity, students will be asked a series of questions to see what they know about air - some possible answers are provided. (These questions will take about 20-30 minutes.) Teachers can then choose from the accompanying series of activities (1-4) to help students check their assumptions about air. (Each activity will take about 15 minutes.)

Online Population Decline/Deformed Frogs Resources

Frog Population Decline Issues Link Listing (The Leaping Pad)

Links to more Links, but good ones.

Environmental Education Links

EE-Link The Environmental Education on the Internet (EE-Link) is maintained by the National Consortium for Environmental Education and Training. This is a great resource for students, teachers and professionals that support K-12 environmental education, such as media specialists, inservice providers, nature center staff and curriculum developers.

AskEric LessonPlan - dozens of lesson ideas categorized by grade level in Earth studies.

Frogs In Your Classroom

Not Just Fish: A How To Guide - This "Teacher's Tidbits" explores interesting ideas for being a bit more creative in the classroom than a simple fishbowl.

Notes from a Homeschooling Dad - Jeff Kelety writes an amusing article "Of Ponds and Tadpoles".

Links to sites where you can get frog kits - An easy solution: one stop to get everything you need to raise a frog in the classroom. Note: be sure to read about the type of frog BEFORE buying!

Raising a specific breed - another option is to get a specific type of frog based on some research in the species caresheets. Finding a specific type of frog for your classroom may involve everything from calling around local pet stores or knowing the local wildlife. There are also some frog breeders that have websites online that can be used as resources. When choosing a frog it is important to keep in mind the same things as when choosing any pet. Please see notes on the page: Your First Frog!

Please note: except for the silly graduate frog at the top, I did not draw anything that appears on the teachers corner page. All other images on this page are from public clip-art archives.