When third grade teacher Genia Connell discovered the What If You Had Animal… series at a school book fair, she was instantly inspired to create a short, captivating project that combines science, technology, and writing. Here’s her step-by-step guide for an animal adaptation project that was an immediate hit with her students—and will be with yours, too!

Read the Books With Your Class

The What If You Had Animal… series encourages students to think about how certain animals’ evolutionary adaptations could be “adapted” to their own lives. Students love the colorful illustrations and learning how the featured animals use their adaptations to survive in the wild.

Over several days, read aloud from different books in the series to introduce your students to the weird and wonderful biology of animal eyes, ears, noses, and more. 

Pose the Question: “What If YOU Had…?”

Gather your class together and hold up the books from the series. Ask your students to think about what their lives would be like if they had an animal adaptation. 

What would it be like to have porcupine hair, a beaver’s teeth, or a cheetah’s paws? 

Encourage your students to discuss what adaptations they would like to have and how they would use them. 

Write About It

For this project, you don't need a fancy graphic organizer to help students plan out their writing, since the assignment is so straightforward. Simply ask students to choose an animal adaptation and then write about how they would use the extraordinary feature in their own life.

Bring in Technology

This part is extra fun! There are several free apps that allow you to superimpose an animal’s face or other features (such as butterfly wings) onto your photos. Use one of these apps to photograph each student with the superimposed animal feature that they are writing about. You can then insert the image into a text document to become the cover page of the student's report.

Print the images and the students’ writing to hang in the classroom or the hallway for an eye-catching display!

If your students love this project, they’ll also love the Who Would Win? series and the fun and easy 60-minute research project that goes along with it. For even more ways to engage your students with nonfiction, check out the Wonder Bubbles project and learn about the power of a paper plate. 

Shop more exciting What If You Had…? books below! You can find all books and activities at The Teacher Store.