Christine A. Elmore
We will begin our scientific study of chimpanzees using the ample supply of children's books about these primates (see bibliography) that I have amassed as well as a National Geographic video entitled
Among The Wild Chimps
which details two decades of Jane Goodall's work with the chimps at Gombe. This video also shows live footage of the chimps she writes about in action. Since we cannot go to Africa to study these animals, we will use these resources to help us learn about the animals that are very similar to man in many ways.
In order to become a skillful observer, you must practice observing. In a unit entitled
Observer
found on the Jane Goodall Institute "Roots & Shoots" website are two activities I would like to modify and elaborate upon and use with my students. The first activity involves choosing an inanimate object and describing it, using your senses. Following this the student would then sketch it trying to include a lot of detail. I will use Valerie Worth's book,
More Small Poems
to help my students write a vivid description of the object they are viewing. In this book students can take their pick from such titles as Safety Pin, Earthworms, Hose, Flamingo and Mosquito, to name a few, and read them to their partners (The whole class will have been divided into partners at the onset of this unit). The beauty of the description in her poems is in their simplicity. The writer's deliberate word choice in describing, for example, a kitten's behavior with its dancing sidewise, landing in a croached position, arching its back, and keeping its ears back and eyes round, peaks the reader's ability to visualize as well as sharpens his sense of anticipation of what the kitten has sighted (which ends up being a piece of fluff). Additional activities would have students selecting an object from home or school and describing it in detail without mentioning what it is, thus leaving the rest of the class to figure out the object's identity, using the descriptive clues given.
The second type of observation will involve observing a pet at home or an animal found in one's background. As suggested in the Roots & Shoots unit aforementioned, my students will make their observations from at least three different perspectives (up close, looking down at, looking up at, a few feet away, etc.) and write down their observations from each of these stances. They will notice that they gain more information from taking different perspectives. I will remind them to keep their eyes and ears open and their bodies still just as Jane Goodall did.
From this simple note-taking we will move to journal writing. Two children's books that use the journal format that I will read to my students are
Moon Journal
by Karen M. Rogers and Diane Cox (featuring a child's daily observations and findings about the moon) and
Ivy's Journal: A Trip to the Yucatan
(featuring a child's daily writing of the sights she saw and the people she met while on a family trip to Mexico). Both are written in first person, include detailed descriptions and include diagrams, drawings and photographs. From there I will move on to our primary focus: chimps. Jane Goodall's book,
The Chimpanzees I Love: Saving Their World And Ours,
will provide the models for good descriptive writing of both animal habitat and behavior. Before reading excerpts from her book I will provide them with a simple checklist of aspects to look for in a wildlife scientist's journal which will include use of first person, descriptions of the animal's habitat, weather, time of day as well as descriptions of the animal itself in terms of its appearance, the behaviors it exhibits, both its behavior alone and, if possible, in interaction with other animals. In addition to this, the writer should include the feelings, reactions, wonderings and questions he/she has during the observation. As I read excerpts from Goodall's book I will ask students to listen for and note aspects from their checklists incorporated in Goodall's writing. Chapter 4, "A Day in the Forest" in the aforementioned book is especially rich in such description. What follows is one small excerpt: "An hour later they all move off together. Suddenly we hear the birdlike calls of read colobus monkeys above us in the canopy. The chimps are excited. They reach out and touch one another, their hair bristling. Then they start to climb and start to hunt." (Goodall 2001, p.51). Goodall's
My Friends the Wild Chimpanzees, With Love,
and
The Chimpanzee Family Book
are also excellent sources to use in teaching about descriptive writing in journals. I will spend time modeling the writing of journal entries on large chart paper imagining that I am Jane Goodall observing the chimps at Gombe. Students will then have a go at it. An important part of the writing experience is to share it with others and so partners will be given ample opportunities to share their journal entries with each other. I will also make it a practice to regularly read and respond to what they have written.
Students now need to practice observing chimps in the wild and we will have multi-viewings of the video mentioned earlier. Martin and Bateson (1986) offer some guidelines to follow when observing and recording animal behavior. I will simplify their suggestions to better suit my young learners. Initially, we will decide which chimps in this video to watch and when. We will use behavior sampling where "the observer watches the whole group of subjects and records each occurrence of a particular type of behavior, together with details of which individuals were involved" (Martin and Bateson 1986). In regard to recording rules we will use a check sheet that details which behaviors we observed and the frequency (measured in one minute intervals using a stopwatch) of occurrence. The procedures for this are laid out in Lesson Plan One. Three activities that chimps spend a lot of time doing are grooming, foraging for food and playing so we will especially focus on these while viewing the video and recording behavior.