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Biodiversity
Activity
2: Neighborhood Diversity
Grade
Level: 4 - 8 grades
Time:
30 minutes - several sessions over the year, depending on how
in-depth a project is done
Concept:
Students observe their school site over time and create a list of
what plants grow there and what animals visit or live on the site.
Objectives:
Students will:
1. observe a given
area (school yard) and record species of plant and animals identified
(Science)
National
Standards
Science
Materials:
pencils, paper, beginner or area field guides (Peterson, Golden,
Audubon, National Geographic, etc.) of birds, mammals, insects, trees,
etc.
Preparation
Needed:
collect field guides
Procedure:
1. Show students how
to use a field guide.
2. Divide the students
into teams of 2-3.
3. Explain the
boundaries of the study.
4. Each team can
be assigned a smaller portion of the entire area to be inventoried or each
team can be assigned a specific type of wildlife to record throughout the
area such as trees, mammals, birds, insects, and so on.
Encourage looking beyond the large
and obvious such as under tree bark, in the soil, flying overhead,
etc.
5. Students gather and
record their information.
6. Inside, make a
composite list of everything found.
Evaluation:
Students can name and/or describe 5 species of plant or animal
found in their inventory area.
Extension:
1. Do more than one
observation/recording session. Spread
the sessions out over the year. Does
time of year make a difference in what is around?
2. Make a “tree of
life” for the classroom. Find
a large bare tree branch. “Plant”
it inside in a bucket of rocks or sand.
Have students draw or cut from magazines pictures of the animals
and plants they found in their school yard and hang them with yarn on the
large tree branch.
3. Keep a record of when
(time of year or time of day) certain plants bloom or when
certain birds appear in the yard.
4.
Make a photo essay bulletin board or wall in the hallway.
Collect pictures of as many different plant and animal species as
possible. Consider drawing
pictures or having students to take their own pictures for species where
magazine pictures could not
be found. Be sure to create a
title that tells others what the collection of pictures represents.
Modifications:
Older
students
1. If field guides do
not easily identify the species, consider teaching the students how to use
taxonomic keys. More advances
field guides (not the beginner series) may also help.
2. Keep records of
what appears when (# 3 in Extension section above) over several years and
compare this data to look for patterns.
3. Provide microscopes
for some of the identification.
Younger
students
1. Make the
identification of species by description such as black bird, yellow
flower, etc. instead of using field guides or pre-select pictures of
what you know the species of the area are going to be and let
students match what they see to those pictures.
ACTIVITY THREE
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