A. Focus of Unit: To describe and discuss the main characteristics of the five different types of vertebrates: fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.

B. Conceptual Outcomes:
    1. Fish are cold-blooded vertebrates that live in water and have bodies that are usually covered with scales.
    2. Amphibians are cold-blooded vertebrates that live part of their life in water and part on land.
    3. Reptiles are cold-blooded vertebrates that have lungs and dry skin usually covered with scales.
    4. Birds are warm-blooded vertebrates that fly and have feathers.
    5. Mammals are warm-blooded vertebrates that have hair or fur and produce milk for their young.

    Basic Thinking skills developed during unit: comparing, naming, observing, estimating, classifying, describing, concluding, sequencing, identifying, recording data, counting objects, hypothesizing.

C. Standards: New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards:
    5.2 All students will develop problem-solving, decision-making, and inquiry skills, reflected by formulating usable questions and hypothese, planning experiments, conducting systematic observations, interpreting and analysing data, drawing conclusions, and communicating results.
    5.5 All students will integrate mathematics as a tool for problem-solving in science, and as a means of expressing and/or modeling scientific theories.
    5.6 All students will gain an understanding of the structure, characteristics, and basic needs of organisms.
    5.7 All students will investigate the diversity of life.
    5.12 All students will develop an understanding of the environment as a system of interdependent components affected by human activity and natural phenomena.

D. Objectives:
    1. List the main characterisitics of each type of vertebrate.
    2. Describe the main characteristic of each type.
    3. Compare the differences between the types of vertebrates.

E. Materials and Resources:
    * Science Textbook: Silver Burdett Science, Centennial Edition. Silver Burdett Company, Morristown, NJ
    * Various handouts for each lesson (see individual lesson plans)
    * Fish packets for fish activity
    * newspaper wantads
    * Overhead projector with transparencies (frog life cycle)
    * Frog comic strip
    * Audobon Society newsletter
    * Pictures for bulletin boards from internet

F. Integrated Activities:
    * Art (frog comic strip)
    * Technology (expert research)
    * Math (fish activity - charting and graphing)

G. Literature Selections:
    Use of various books, internet resources, encyclopedias, magazines, and newsletters.