Animal Field Guide Project Rubric

Animal Field Guide Project Rubric

Objective: Create a field guide in the form of a book, where each page includes information on
the physical characteristics, habitat, diet, and behaviour of one species of your own interest from each
of the major phyla that we studied in this unit.

Project goals:

• Undertake your own study of the diversity of animal life
• Finding a species that interests you within the phyla that you are studying
• Identifying the phylum that species belong to based on their physical characteristics
• Identifying unique changes to phylum level characteristics that are adapted to/for the lifestyle

of your species

• Describing the habitat and lifestyle of different animal
• Researching interesting behaviours
• Citing the sources of the information you used in your field guide

Scope:

Create a book, where each page contains an image and specific information for a species in each of
the major animal phyla that we are studying in this unit (we are studying 8 phyla, so your book should
have 8 pages).

Create a title page that includes your name, block, a creative title for your book, an image of
your favourite animal (drawn or image taken from the internet or photo taken by you!) and a couple
of sentences about why it is your favourite animal.

Each page of your book should include the following:

1. An image of the animal species. This can be in the form of a drawing, an image from the internet or even better, a picture that you have taken yourself.

2. The common name, the species name, the phylum and the class that the

species belongs to.

3. Habitat information about the species. This includes where they are found in the world,

any specific geographical ranges (ex. Along pacific coast from northern California to southern
British Columbia), and the type of habitat and be as specific as you can (ex. They live under
logs in coniferous forests above 100m in altitude).

4. Diet and lifestyle information about the species. This includes what your species eats, how

it finds and eats its food, and how it survives in its habitat (ex. Is your species nocturnal? Is it
a predator? How does it avoid being eaten by other animals?, does it use camouflage?, is it
poisonous? etc.).

5. General characteristics of the species. What characteristics does your species have that

allows you identify it as belonging to the phylum you are describing?

6. Unique characteristics of the species.  What are the unique and identifying characteristics

of your species? Describe your species so that someone who had never seen one before could
identify it.

7. Interesting Fact(s) about the species. Provide at least one fact that you find interesting

about the species you have researched.

8. List the Sources you gathered information from (websites, books etc.).

Evaluation:

Criteria      Scoring

Overall Formatting

• Book format 1
• Be creative with your presentation 5

                                                                                6 (total)

Title Page

• Your name and block 1
• Creative title 2
• Picture of favourite animal 1
• Why is it your favourite animal? 2

                                                                                 6 (total)

Evaluation for each species (must include one species from each phylum we studied (8 total)):

Image of the animal species 1

• +1 if you took the picture yourself

Common name and taxonomy

• Common name 0.5
• Scientific name (genus and species) 0.5
• Phylum name 0.5
• Class name 0.5

2 (total)

Habitat information

• Location 2
• Range 2
• Type 2

6 (total)

Diet and lifestyle information

• Diet 1
• How does it acquire food? 2
• Lifestyle information 3

6 (total)

General Characteristics 5 (total)

Unique Characteristics 5 (total)

Interesting fact(s) 3 (total)

Total per page (species) = 28

Project total = 236

• 8 species
• Title page
• Formatting