A Guinea Pig Makes An Excellent Classroom Pet

Curtis Brasfield Horace Mann
8050 S. Chappel
Chicago IL 6O617
312-535-6640

Objectives:

By carefully studying the behavior of a live guinea pig in a third-grade
classroom for four days, the students will gain direct knowledge of the guinea
pig's behavior and determine if it will make a good classroom pet.


Materials Needed:

guinea pig (live) bread insect
cage corn onion
observation guide questions pellets pepper
newspaper apple salt
carrot banana cloth
lettuce meat potato

Procedures and Strategies:


A brief outline of the subject to be studied will be presented by the
classroom teacher.
The students will then be asked to observe and study the behavior of a live
guinea pig in their classroom for four school days and write answers to the
following questions based on their observations:

1. What does the animal look like?
2. How does it behave?
3. Does it like young children or does it become easily upset?
4. What foods does it like? Dislike?
5. Can it be trained? How?
6. What kind of noises does it make?
7. Is it safe to keep around children?
8. How often does it sleep during the day? How often does it play?
9. What are some basic rules we need to follow in taking care of
the guinea pig in the classroom?

After the four-day observation period, a classroom discussion of the
students' findings will take place on the fifth day.

Multicultural Emphasis:

Students will be asked to research the origin of the guinea pig and report
their findings to the class for extra credit.

Performance Assessment:

Based on students' observations, study, classroom discussion and research,
the students will write, in their own words, at least five reasons why a guinea
pig will make a good classroom pet for third graders, and also identify the
origin of the guinea pig (the country, the location of the country, and the
language of the people who live there).
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