Pre-Visit Activities : Adaptations : Assessment
Third - Fifth Grade Online Curriculum : Communities

Introduce students to one of South Carolina's ocean inhabitants, the porcupinefish, by simply showing students a picture of the animal. Ask each student to look closely at the animal pictured. Have students write a paragraph (click here for a sample, blank worksheet) about the porcupinefish that includes the following:

  1. A description of three adaptations they think the porcupinefish might have based on their observation of the animal (1 point per adaptation; 3 points total); credit all rational observations.
  2. A description of how they think each adaptation helps the porcupinefish to survive in the ocean (1 point per description; 3 points total); Teachers should credit all descriptions even if the explanation of the function of the adaptation is not biologically correct; the goal of this assessment is to determine if students can observe an animal, look at its body parts and come up with a possible guess as to how those body parts might help an animal to survive and not whether or not the guess is accurate.
  3. Creative Writing (2 points total)
    • 0 points- student just provides a list of adaptations and functions
    • 1 point- student provides descriptions in complete sentences to create a simple story
    • 2 points- student infuses imagination and creativity while providing descriptions in complete sentences to create a story
An example of a paragraph that would receive the full eight points appears below.

This is a story about Spike, the porcupinefish. Spike has a small mouth that helps him to eat little jellyfish in the ocean. Spike loves to eat jellyfish! He has to swim around in the water to catch his food and Spike uses his fins to move. Spike is called Spike because his mother likes the name Spike and because he has pointy things all over his body. Spike uses his pointy things to scare other fish away so that they won't eat him.

Note that porcupinefish do have small mouths, but they use them to eat snails, crabs and shrimp, not jellyfish. However, the student who wrote the paragraph above received full credit.