Teaching Strategies
We will examine the role of humans as caretakers, including conservation efforts by people and the impact government statuses such as “extinct”, “endangered”, “threatened”, etc. have on those national or state led conservation efforts. Students will observe and monitor bat activity in their neighborhoods and nearby locations. Students will apply their observations, research on bat physiology, and understanding of the role of being a human caretaker by designing and constructing a bat roosting box to encourage bat activity in their area.
The teaching section of this unit will include a sequence of lessons and activities that will amount to at least five, one-hour long class sessions. The unit will begin with an introduction to bats through literature (the book Stellaluna by Janell Cannon immediately comes to mind) and media. Students will discuss and record what they already know about bats, including stories of their own bat experiences and feelings, and compare them to birds. This will be followed by several lessons on bat physiology and behaviors, as well as their role in the ecosystem. I will attempt to build a local connection to any current museum, zoo, Audubon, or other scientific research and conservation agencies working with bats in our area. This would be an excellent time to have students visit, or be visited by, a presenter with live specimens of bats. It would also be a good opportunity to look at the works of engineers who have used the study of bats, such as their use of echolocation, as the basis for some human technologies and inventions.
Once students have a foundational understanding and appreciation of bats, we will examine reasons for their decline. Students will learn about the research into the main disease, white-nose syndrome, that is killing bats by the millions each year, and what is being done to help them (which at this point, isn’t much beyond understanding the disease). Per the USDA, “At least 5.5 million bats have died from WNS since 2006, but it is difficult to document the extent of these declines and their impacts on agriculture, forests, and other ecosystems because there is no coordinated program to monitor bat populations in North America.”24 In response to this need, scientists and statisticians from several federal agencies and universities, including representatives from Canada and Mexico, developed the North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat), which can be used to monitor trends in bat populations on state, federal, provincial, tribal, and private lands. Students will evaluate data and consider the impacts that an environment without bats might look like, including the human costs such as the impact on food production and the increased use of pesticides, or the uptake in the spread of diseases through insects that bats would have eaten. I will also consider having the class contribute to national monitoring efforts like NABat. Students will have a take-home field journal to document and record bat activity and return that information to class to compile the data.
As caretakers, we will try to promote a healthy population and attract bats to our area by designing and building bat roosting boxes. To make these, students will need to research and design bat boxes that will be appealing, attractive, and functional. We may construct one out of wood and other materials as a class to be placed on the school grounds (part of our building includes an outdoor classroom), and I may have students build their own smaller versions to take home (depending on time, materials, etc.…). Either way, successful construction and usage by local bats will be based on student research, including bat physiology and behavior, local bat activity observations, and careful material selection, roosting box design, and construction. Students have access to woodworking tools and materials and have been trained to use them in my STEM lab.
Finally, students will observe their bat roosting boxes for signs of bat activity and evaluate the effectiveness of their design, construction, and placement of the box.
In summary, students will learn about a variety of bats and their roles as either pollinators or insect control. Then they will focus on the little brown bats and the reasons for little brown bat population decline due to a human introduced fungal infection and other reasons. They will examine the multiple ripple effects of a healthy little brown bat population as well as a decimated or extinct little brown bat population.
Lesson 1: (1 hour) Introduce students to the terms “extinct” and “endangered species” and engage in discussion of what it means for something to be extinct or endangered. Continue by introducing students to bats as an example of a creature that we see in Connecticut that is facing possible extinction. Read Stellaluna by Janell Cannon and/or Bat Count by Anna Forrester. Follow these literature resources with some short bat documentaries designed for kids on YouTube. https://youtu.be/9FVoTMOorXA and https://youtu.be/z4fexFb9cco are two that I found at the time of this writing. If you read the book Bat Count, it works as a great introduction to observing bats from home in the evening. Each evening around dusk, students will be encouraged to look for bats in the sky near their homes and count them. The count can then be kept as a class tally. Encourage students to “hunt for bats” using a camera if they have one available.
Lesson 2: (1 hour) Bat physiology. In this lesson, have students create a model of a bat body. This can be through sculpture, drawing, or other types of craft media. Key components of a bat body should be labeled or somehow identified. They are wing, thumb, elbow, forearm, claw, feet, tail, eye, nose, and mouth.
Lesson 3: (1 hour) Discuss White Nose Syndrome, what it is, what it looks like, and the impact it has on little brown bats. A good YouTube video to show students is done by Parks Canada and is called “Bats and white-nose syndrome” located at https://youtu.be/MQtrDxJRhOU. Then, teach students how to play the online White Nose Syndrome game located at https://www.whitenosesyndrome.org/mmedia-education/game-on-the-white-nose-syndrome-video-game. The goal of the game is to keep bats alive as long as possible while balancing funding through ecotourism, conservation, and research. The game is a bit difficult at first but give students some time to explore and see which variables lead to the healthiest bat population over time.
Lesson 4: (1 hour) Introduce a pre-built bat box. We will use our maker space materials and supplemental cedar planks and wood glue to construct a bat box, but first we should do some research by examining the features of the commercial box. Design on paper before getting materials and constructing. The teacher will need to decide if you are making one as a class, several in groups, or individual ones. I am sure cost and access to resources will influence this decision. Refer to the above section on Bat Roosting Box Construction for links to plans.
Lesson 5: (1 hour) Continue bat box construction and discuss placement. Building bat boxes may take some additional time beyond this hour, depending on the size of your class and how many bay boxes you are making.
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