Infrared Zoo Lesson 3 The Invisible Zoo

GETTING READY

Pre-requisite Skills for Learners:

Your learners should have the following skills in order to participate efficiently and smoothly in this lesson:

• Ability to work in small collaborative groups of 3-4 students each
  
• Ability to work independent of direct instructor facilitation as the instructor will be wandering the classroom and helping all groups
  
• Ability to communicate findings, reasoning, and work to others
  
• Cognitive ability to recognize patterns that have *not* been introduced/explained before hand
  
• Prior experience with inquiry-based and explorative learning
  
• Ability to navigate and mine the internet for images and information related to research project
  
• Familiarity with the Google search engine (http://www.google.com)

Pre-requisite Content Knowledge for Learners:

Prior to this lesson, learners should be familiar with the following concepts:

• Temperature is a measure of the level of heat.
  
• Heat can move from place to place.
  
• Working definition and understanding of how warm blooded and cold blooded animals thermoregulate
  
• Knowledge of various animal habitats: grasslands (or savanna), temperate forest, tropical rain forest, desert, polar ice/tundra, tidepools, coastal regions, etc.
  
• (optional) Have already completed a unit or lessons on zoology and are familiar with a variety of animals (cold-blooded and warm-blooded)

Preparation Work for the Instructor:

1. Reserve a computer classroom that has internet access and multiple workstations. Learners will be conducting research on the internet and will need access to the Infrared Zoo.

2. If you do not have internet access capabilities, you will need to print, in color, the Infrared Zoo animal pages from here: http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/image_galleries/ir_zoo/ Click on each animal name and print the entire page to include the written information. You will need to make enough color printed copies of the Infrared Zoo so that each learning group has its own copy. These will be referred to in the lesson guide as Infrared Zoo booklets.

3. Review the lesson and brainstorm modifications for your particular set of learners. Have ready some discussion questions and points that you want to cover for the lesson to fit into your existing curriculum and state science standards.

4. Design an evaluation rubric for this lesson based upon your learners, how you have tailored this lesson, and where this lesson falls into your curriculum. We do not provide an "evaluation" activity/rubric in this lesson, but we do provide sample learning goals generic to this lesson "as is".

Background Knowledge and Resources for the Instructor:

Provided below are some internet resources to help you get a better grasp on infrared light and image technology. Please note that we have compiled a Cool Cosmos Teachers Guide to the Infrared that can be found at: http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/image_galleries/ir_zoo/lessons/background.html.

Infrared Tutorial
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/ir_tutorial

Video- Infrared: More Than Your Eyes Can See
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/videos/more_than_your/

Heat and Temperature
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/light_lessons/thermal/

Learn About Warm and Cold-Blooded Animals Using Infrared Images
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/image_galleries/ir_zoo/coldwarm.html
- This resource is the premise for this lesson. We suggest that you go through this part of our website before the activity in preparation for your learner's questions. It also makes a good wrap-up activity for learners to complete after the activity is finished.

Infrared Application: Animal Studies
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/light_lessons/our_world_different_light/animals.html

The Camera That Caught a Leopard
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/leopards/camera.html

Infrared Zoo
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/image_galleries/ir_zoo/ - Go through the entire zoo to get background information on each animal's infrared signature.