WILD ANIMAL PARK FIELD TRIP
LANGUAGE ARTS

Your field trip to the San Diego Wild Animal Park at San Pasqual is meant to be a unique experience in which you not only enjoy yourself, but will learn much about your planet and the species with which you share it. Your team teachers have each assigned you responsibilities for research, investigation and observation during your field trip. You also have responsibilities for language arts as well.

You must provide pencils or pens yourself. It is recommended that you take this handout with you on the trip for reference. You are required to maintain a "trip log" of the events you observe during the day; perhaps on the back of this notice. Your "trip log" represents your brainstorming and rough notes. As a MINIMUM (that is, for a C grade), you must write one descriptive paragraph per every two hours of the trip. The paragraph must describe the events during the previous two hours. Thus, if your trip lasts from 7:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., a total of nine hours, you are expected to write four paragraphs for a C, six for a B, and eight for an A grade. These are to be well written, complete, properly spelled, and grammatically correct paragraphs to the best of your ability. They MUST contain a topic sentence, multiple supporting details and a concluding or summarizing sentence. Your paper will be entitled, "My Walk On The Wild Side" and the opening paragraph should indicate the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, and WHERE of this trip. (This paper will be worth 100 points.)

In addition, you must create a map of the Wild Animal Park indicating those sights, shows and activities you observed or in which you participated. This map is to be "keyed" to reflect what you did supported by your narrative description in your paper described in the paragraph above. In other words, if you rode the monorail at 12:00 noon and your 1:00 p.m. entry discusses that activity, your map should show that as the 12:00-1:00 p.m. activity. These maps are to be individualized and colored. The neater, more detailed and more colorful, then the higher the grade. EVERYONE must ride the monorail. (This map will be worth 50 points.)

For extra credit, on the reverse of your map you may identify an animal, a plant, a location, or fact which begins with a unique letter of the alphabet. As an example, you might list POLAR BEAR for the letter P; if you see one! (This extra credit will be worth 2 points for every accurate and correctly spelled entry, up to 52 points.)

It is NOT expected that you will complete these requirements the day of the trip, but your "trip log," field notes, and other information must be sufficiently detailed to allow you to complete both the paper and the map during the several days following the trip. The specific due date will be assigned when you return.

BE THOROUGH      BE CREATIVE      BE COLORFUL      BE YOURSELF