Jungle Board

Student Teaching (Riverside) – Spring 2020

Managing students’ behavior and motivation is a key element of facilitating the

classroom environment. If students are to be engaged and active in the learning process, the

teacher must clearly communicate behavioral expectations and design instruction in a way that

motivates and excites students to learn. This is what I aimed to do when creating my “jungle

board” for our jungle unit. Each day of the jungle unit, we planned to learn about a new animal.

To create an authentic and exciting experience for students, I created the jungle board to

document the animals we found while exploring in the jungle.

At the beginning of each of our ELA lessons during the jungle unit, I facilitated a

learning experience that mimicked exploring in the jungle. I would dim the lights, turn on

background jungle noises, and begin our PowerPoint in the jungle. I instructed students to hold

up their binoculars and keep an eye out for our new and exciting jungle animal. With each

animal on the PowerPoint, I included three key facts that students needed to learn and recall (our

reading strategy for the unit) to then transfer onto our jungle board. Along with each animal, we

came up with motions based on the facts we learned to help us remember that animal. This

proved to be a very successful component in motivating students to learn about jungle animals.

During morning stations or indoor recess, I would often find students standing together by the

jungle board, picking their favorite animal or trying to remember the facts about the animal.

I believe my jungle board illustrates the importance and effectiveness of creating

elements to intentionally motivate students. By integrating motions and creating a jungle

environment within the classroom, the instruction became more meaningful and exciting for

students as they were able to collaborate to come up with motions and practice recalling by

“documenting” what animal we found in our exploration of the jungle that day.
 First Day of Jungle Board
As we learned about more animals,
we would add that animal’s picture
and information paper.

Animals
We gave each animal a picture and
paper. As we learned about the 3
key facts of that animal, I would
write those 3 key facts as students
recalled them from the PowerPoint.
 3 Key Facts
Students were able to open up the
paper, similar to the design of a flip
book. The 3 key facts about that
animal were contained on this
paper. This picture shows the 3 key
facts we learned about the tiger.

Jungle PowerPoint
I chose to use a PowerPoint as my
platform for teaching students key
facts about the animals. With
PowerPoint, I was able to import
jungle background noises that
would play as we learned about
that animal.
 Motions
For each animal, we collaborated
and brainstormed a motion that
helped us remember that animal. In
this picture, we are coming up with
the motion for a sloth. We agreed
upon the motion of moving our
hands slowly like we were
climbing a branch.

Jungle Board
This is our
completed jungle
board.