Ecology

1. SEED INTRODUCTION

Purpose: To get to know students, have them get to know you, get to know rules of classroom and set down your own rules for keeping control of the classroom. Begin a SEED scrapbook, read a book, or do something else fun.

Timeline:

Introduction of yourselves: 5 minutes

Introduction of SEED/Ecology: 10 minutes

Classroom Behavior Rules: 5 minutes

SEED scrapbook OR read a book: 45 minutes

Further Explanation:

Introduction: It is very important that the students know who you are, what you are doing and what your classroom rules are as early as possible. Introduce yourselves, write your names on the board (though in 3^rd grade, many students will have limited reading ability), and have them say each tutor’s name several times. Explain about what SEED does. When you first go in, ask the teacher how she gets the kids under control when they are getting anxious or out of hand, many have little sayings, counting tricks, etc. If they don’t give you anything, make one up on your own and establish it with the class. The first impression you make can carry you a long way, so make sure it is a good one — you are their friend, but you are also trying to teach them.

SEED SCRAPBOOK: The SEED scrapbook is something that kids can save all of their SEED work in, thus showing at the end of the year what all was done. It will hopefully make SEED have a more lasting impression on the kids. Bring some kind of a folder/binder for every kid (usually 20 kids/class). After telling them about SEED, tell them that they are going to decorate the cover. First, have them all write SEED somewhere, then decorate it as they want.

 

2. ECOLOGY — WHAT I S IT?

Purpose: Introduce basic concepts of Ecology, including organisms, environment and habitat

 

Timeline

Lecture: 10 minutes

Group Discussion: 15 minutes

Activity: 20 minutes

Coloring: 15 minutes

 

Further Explanation:

LECTURE: Ecology is the study of organisms and their environment. Organisms are living things, such as plants and animals. In simple terms, ecology is learning about all the living things in the world, as well as everything around them. Q: What organisms have students seen in EPA? The environment is everything around the organism. This includes, among other things, the organism’s habitat. Habitat is where animal lives. It needs to provide access to food , water and shelter Q: What are different habitats you can think of? (A: human houses, trees, caves, water, soil, even other animals, are all habitats for different organisms) Sometimes many organisms can use the same habitat (humans and pets live in same house, many different organisms live in same tree, same cave, etc.) When different animals live together, they end up interacting with each other.

ACTIVITY: Earthworm Habitats

Materials: large clear jar, two cups soil, one cup sand, tablespoon of dry oats (oatmeal), water, paper, rubber band, 10 live earthworms (get from bait store or dig up in field somewhere).

Procedure:

Put one cup of soil into jar, and add water until soil is wet. Then pour cup of sand over, and follow with cup of dry soil. Sprinkle oats on top of dry soil, and put worms on top of those. Finally, cover jar with paper and secure with rubberband. Put in cool, dark place. Come back next week, and you will be able to see tunnels where the worms travelled and lived (its habitat), over the course of that week. Also, see sand and soil mixed up. This because worms live in and eat soil. Thus, they have basically eaten there way through the soil and into sand, mixing it all up.

COLORING: If there is still have time, have students color a picture of their favorite EPA organism, label and put it in there SEED scrapbooks.

3. ANIMAL NEEDS

Purpose: Have students understand some of the basic needs of animals and plants: light, air, food, shelter and water.

Timeline:

Lecture: 15 minutes

Oh Deer Game: 25 minutes

Brainstorm: 5 minutes

 

LECTURE: Q: What do plants/animals need to live. (A: There are three basic elements — food, water, habitat. Habitat includes all nonliving factors like air, light, etc.) Q: What would happen if you didn’t get food, or water, or a place to live? (A: you would die) Thus, all animals and plants need to find these basic things. That determines where a plant or animal will live. Q: Could a fish live in the classroom? How about plants? Or a polar bear (etc. etc., be creative think of different animals) Why or why not? What would be missing? ). (A: Fish could live in a classroom (some classes may have them), but only if you brought their habitat (water) with them. A polar bear’s habitat is completely different. Etc. etc.) Next, discuss where animals do live in the real world. This includes trees, in water, in holes, in nests etc. (again, encourage the kids to be creative, and guess places where animals could live). All of these different places are their habitats. Review again the three important things are habitat, food and water.

OH DEER GAME: This game reinforces what animals need to live, and kind of shows what happens to them when they die. Divide the kids in half, and line them each up about 10 feet away from each other. One line represents deer. The other line represents 3 things deer need (foor, water and habitat). Show them three hand signals, one for food, one for water, and one for habitat (i.e., for food, rub stomach, for water point to mouth and for habitat make a little triangle over their head). At the count of three, each person in both lines picks hand signal and holds it up. For the deer, this signal represents what they need, and for the resources, this represents what that person is that round. The deer then WALK (make sure to enforce this rule or it gets out of hand) over to the resources (which must remain stationary), and try to match what they wanted with the resources there. The deer that don’t find a match move over to resource side, while the resources that get deer become deer themselves. Then the next round starts. Play until the kids get too crazy.

BRAINSTORM: Discuss implications of Oh Deer game: when deer don’t fulfill their needs, they die. This creates more room and resources for the rest of the deer. Thus, the environment around the deer controls how many deer can live there. That’s why deer or any other animal don’t take over the forest and overrun the world.

4. FOOD CHAIN

Purpose: Get students to understand that one of the basic interactions between organisms is eating each other.

Timeline:

Lecture: 10 minutes

Group discussion: 15 minutes

Cooperative Learning: 15 minutes

Activity: 15 minutes

 

LECTURE: Q: What did you eat for lunch today? Food is one of the basic requirements for something to live. What would happen if you didn’t eat? ( act this out in graphic detail). Q: What are the things you eat? Q: What do those things eat? Should be able to tell that there is some order to who eats who. Grass do not eat cows. Cows do not eat tigers, etc. etc. There are four levels — producers, herbivores, carnivores, decomposers.

GROUP DISCUSSION: Divide students into four groups if possible, otherwise three. Every student in each group will be taught in depth about one of the above (producer, herbivore, carnivore and, if 4 groups, decomposer). Thus, every student in producer group should learn what producers are (plants), where they get their food from (sun), and what eats it ( herbivores), and give a few examples (different types of plants/trees and, if really ambitious, seaweed). Same for herbivores, carnivores and decomposers. Make sure every student understands well enough to teach to other kids, because that is what they will be doing next. Also make sure to explain that whatever is being eaten always needs to be present in far larger numbers than that which is doing the eating. Make a comparison with humans and food (i.e. how many vegetables do they eat in a day…probably more than one).

COOPERATIVE LEARNING: After every student knows their food chain level well enough to teach basics, make same number of groups again, but this time divide them such that there are a few kids from each group. Then, serve as moderators, asking leading questions, etc., but have the students teach each other about what the different things are. Make sure to help them out if they need help, so that everyone really does understand.

ACTIVITY: If there is time, have all the kids get in a big circle, each of them with a piece of string that stretches the radius of the circle. Have all of the of the producers raise their hand, each find one herbivore, and give one end of their string to them. Then, have the herbivores do the same thing to the carnivores. The herbivores can stay in the middle, in the mushpot. Should be able to see why call it a food web (make sure they started off randomly distributed…ie not all of the producers together, etc.

 

 

5. COSTANO ECOSYSTEM

Purpose: To get them to have fun with Ecology, and explore the ecosystem of Costano.

Timeline:

Lecture: 5 minutes

Explore: 55 minutes

LECTURE: What is an ecosystem again? Go over it. Living and non-living factors. Their school is an ecosystem. Today, they will be scientists and explorers and discover the ecosystem of Costano. Emphasize very strongly that if they are at all bad you won’t hesitate to take the bad kids back to the classroom and just sit around with them while everyone else is outside. Then, have them take a piece of paper, draw line down middle, and label one side living, other side nonliving factors (entire paper should be labeled Costano Ecosystem.

EXPLORE: Make sure they line up properly and are orderly all the way out. Take them out into the field in front of the school (near the parking lot). Let them run around trying to identify as many different animals as they can, let them use sight, as well as hearing, and any other senses. Bring in tree books to identify different types of trees, etc. They should get lots of stuff. Make sure to point out that different types of trees are different organisms. Also have them identify other parts of ecosystem (tree can be an organism, can also be a habitat.) Also, think of sun, air, water, etc. Basically, let them have fun, but again, make sure you are strict enough that it is not dangerous (ie running into the parking lot, no fights, etc. etc)

6. DIFFERENT ECOSYSTEMS = DIFFERENT ADAPTATIONS

Purpose: To get these kids to understand that the reason why animals are so different is because they need to adapt to their environment in order to get their basic necessities and avoid being killed.

Timeline:

Lecture: 15 minutes

Group Learning: 20 minutes

Playacting: 25 minutes

 

LECTURE: Are there different types of ecosystems? Yes! Think of some different types of places where animals live — arctic, jungle, rainforest etc. etc (describe these). Are there the same animals in all of these places? No. Bring in some books with good pictures of different types of animals, and how they have special systems that they use in their particular ecosystem to help them get the things they need (which are habitat, water and food), as well as avoid being killed. (Interesting animals include bats, platypus, penguin, ostrich, giraffe. Also, in more general terms, think of fishes, birds, polar bears, dessert animals, the different challenges they have to face and how they deal with them. Obviously there are tons of animals/climes to choose from, this is more meant as a general overview, don’t need a lot of depth here. Stress that an animal’s adaptations are designed to get food, water and place to live. Think of what would happen if polar bears lived in a dessert, etc. etc.

GROUP LEARNING: Each group will have an interesting animal to learn about. Give them basic information, and make sure the groups have animals that are fairly distinct from each other. Make sure they learn not only about the animal, but how it has adapted to the environment it lives in etc. Then, tell them that they have to get up in front of the class and act out the animal while the rest of the class has to guess what they are doing. Have them plan strategies of how to act out the animal, and try to get every student involved, as props, etc. The tutor will need to play a big part in organizing this "play", because students will be a bit shy to do it themselves.

PLAYACTING: Have each group go up in turn and act out different animals. If there is still time at the end, see if there are other volunteers willing to do more of the same.

7. DESIGN YOUR OWN SUPER ANIMAL

Purpose: Have kids use their originality and creativity in making animals to fit a certain ecosystem.

Timeline:

Lecture: 5 minutes

Group Work: 20 minutes

Drawing: 25 minutes

Presentation: 10 minutes

LECTURE: Brief recap of previous lessons, including what an ecosystem is, and some interesting ways animals have adapted to fit those ecosytems (see how much the students can remember about it).

GROUP WORK: Divide up into different groups. Give each group their own ecosystem. Make them fairly different (such as dessert, ocean, arctic) Have each group discuss what kinds of neat adaptations an animal could have to live in that environment. Encourage them to use their imagination and help them out a lot in the beginning. Have them make crazy animals, with things like lasers or computers, huge mouth, knives on their fingers, anything that would help them live in that ecosystem.

DRAWING: Either have one large drawing (bring large, body size pieces of paper) which all the kids in the group work on while they are discussing their super animals, or else have each kid do their own based on their discussions. Or perhaps do both (first work on a large scale one, then have the students do their own to keep in their scrapbooks).