Exploring The Wetlands

You can click on any of the book covers in the launcher graphic above to jump to screenshots from that book and a brief description of it. You can also access that information by scrolling down this page. After each description, you can click a link to return here and try another title. This unit is included in both Ecosystems Collection A and the full Wonders and Magic of Nature collection.

The anchor book for the unit, Wetlands, begins by explaining the role of this important and widespread biome in purifying the air and water. It then surveys and explains the distictions between swamps, bogs, and marshes, the three main varieties of wetlands.

Photos, supplemental text, and videos are presented on pop-up grids so that students can control the flow of information. On this page, the button on the open pop-up grid plays a video panorama of this cypress swamp.

This book follows the anchor book, and provides students an opportunity to show their comprehension of wetlands through a series of multiple choice questions.

Each set of three questions is preceded by a photograph originally seen in the anchor book, to jog the students' memories and make this exercise more than a simple drill.

Diversity in the Marsh follows the experiences of a student who has gone to the marsh to think about a writing assignment. He is supposed to write about diversity, and soon realizes that examples of diversity are all around him.

Photos, sounds and videos like this one of a red-winged blackbird enable students reading the story to experience the ambience of the marsh as if they, too had a chance to go there.

Like the student in the story, the real students who read Diversity in the Marsh will have many thoughts to share. They get a chance to create a book about their experience in the marsh.

A pop-up grid gives them a chance to insert one photo from the marsh onto each page. They can then write about the photo in the provided cell. The finished journal can be saved and also printed.

Students have a chance to explore the swamp in a choose your adventure format. There are eight paths through the swamp, and each student will have a slightly different experience on this expedition.

When students return from the swamp, they create a finished journal about their explorations. A pop-up grid with photos from their adventure enables students to insert one photo on each page of the journal.

They then write about their experiences, using the photos to organize their observations. The finished journal is saved and also can be printed.

This activity challenges students to sort words from in this unit from those they have encountered in another unit. In "Exploring the Wetlands", the student sorts wetlands words and words from the rainforest unit.

Students choose words from a pop-up grid and insert them into two cells, representing Wetlands and Rainforest. When they have finished sorting the words, the gridset is saved into their portfolios where it is available for review.