Brooks River Brown Bears

Students find out about the brown bears that fish for salmon along the Brooks River in Katmai National Park, Alaska, and are introduced to the Guiding Question. The class watches a video clip, views photographs, and observes the physical and behavioral differences between bears at different life stages. After learning definitions of traits, students work in pairs to categorize brown bears’ specific traits as being either inherited or acquired.

Students begin by reviewing and discussing their categorizations of brown bears’ specific traits as being either inherited or acquired. After observing a photograph and video clip, students find out that bears learn (acquire) their fishing techniques. Students observe individual bears on the live bear cam and record their observations on a data sheet. When they are done, the class watches a video clip of bears using different fishing techniques. The lesson concludes with students using what they have learned about bears’ fishing techniques in order to come up with a question they might answer while watching a live cam.

Students begin this lesson by sharing the question they wrote at the end of Lesson 2. Then they again use a data sheet to record their observations of individual bears on a live cam from Brooks River. When they are done with the live observations, the class views photographs of four bears that belong to the same family. They identify the inherited and acquired traits of each.