Classroom Activities:
Activity 1: Build an Ecosystem in a Bag:
Students will each get a bag of dirt to hook them into the activity. Students will first build a small-scale ecosystem in a large zip-lock bag.
- Students will add soil, water, seeds, and small organisms (like a plant clipping or bug) to a clear plastic bag.
- Hang the bag in a sunny window and observe changes over the next few days.
- Use their observations to guide a class discussion when introducing ecology for the first time.
This activity will create curiosity and give students something real to refer to as they learn. We will use these changes we see to kick off discussions about ecosystems and interconnected living systems.
Activity 2: Lima Beans Grow in a Bag:
Each student will get 2 two-quart size lock bags, 2 paper towels, two large lima beans, and students will need a stapler to staple the zip lock bag.
- Students will staple the zip lock bag about ¼ in length across the bag and fill the bottom part of the bag make sure it's not filled to the top near the staples.
- Students will then fold the paper towel and wet it. Then place the damp paper towel in the bag.
- Last, place the large lima bean in the bag with the wet paper towel and close the bag.
- Hang one bag on the window so it gets plenty of sunlight
- Repeat the same process with the second bag and hang it in a dark room with little light
This activity is to show how plants need sunlight to grow beautiful green plants. Producers need sunlight to produce their own food, which is photosynthesis. Without producers, primary consumers will have nothing to eat. Students will record their observations in their notebooks.
Activity 3: Make Vocabulary Stick with a Biotic vs. Abiotic Sorting Station
This is a fun way to get students to learn and memorize the key vocabulary words for succession.
Words like biotic, abiotic, niche, and limiting factors can all be overwhelming to a student learning new vocabulary word. Here is a hands-on visual activity to help these terms and other
ecological terms click.
- Students will get cards showing elements like sunlight, moss, and animals.
- They will collaborate with each other to sort them into biotic and abiotic groups
- I will follow up in class discussion to clarify and deepen understanding
- This activity gives students something visual to connect to new vocabulary
- It also encourages collaboration, conversation, and active learning
- It is a visual observation to let me know who gets it and who still needs a little more support.
This sorting station will introduce vocabulary words in a fun, active way and gives students the opportunity to interact with the content.
Activity 4: Draw it out to Deepen Understanding
When students create something like a drawing from something they just learned, they will be better able to retain what they have learned. Students will draw what they know about succession. This activity helps them with memory and retention. When students draw their pictures, I can visually see who understands primary and secondary succession. This helps me to see where I need to clarify and revisit and reteach
- Students choose or are assigned a type of succession
- They will draw a scene that visually explains how that process works
- I will observe and walk around and ask questions and instantly see who is getting the concept and who isn’t.
Activity 5: Observation Walk to Get Students Talking
The Students and I will go on a guided observation nature walk. We will observe all the things in nature that we see. Students will write down what they see as we are on our nature walk in their notebooks. During this walk students will need to identify
- The type of ecosystem around our school
- The local climate
- Biotic and abiotic components
- Visual populations, species, and communities' students observe
This activity will help students connect ecological vocabulary to the world around them. Familiar spaces suddenly become alive with meaning. Students will return to the classroom with excitement full of questions and connections.
Native Indigenous Connection
As indigenous peoples, we take care of Mother Earth because we know how important Earth’s resources are. My research will include stories from tribes that have respect and care for Mother Earth. Stories like The Earth on Turtle’s Back, the Onondaga creation story from the Northeast Woodlands, The Dine Story of Creation and Southwest Navajo Story, and The White Buffalo Calf Woman and the Sacred Pipe by Lakota Sioux- Great Plains. These stories tie into the creation of life on Earth and how we commune with the animals, plants, and Mother Nature. We must first respect her, keep her clean, and take care of her. Here are some activities I will be using to teach about taking care of our ecosystems.
Story 1- The Earth on Turtle’s Back, the Onondaga creation story from the Northeast Woodlands.
Trace the supplies of food, air, water, and shelter back to their origins in nature. Students need to understand that the air, water, food, and shelter we need each day all come from the earth, like the one created on the turtle’s back. Students need to understand that many important foods originated in North America and are now used worldwide
Nature: Who Needs It? The Turtle’s Gift to People
Activity 1: A Simulation of Gas Exchange Between People and Plants
Air Supply: Teacher will explain how plants use photosynthesis (made from light), during which water and carbon dioxide are converted in the green chlorophyll of the leaf into glucose, protein, starch, other nutrients and water. Oxygen too has been released. Animals use this oxygen for respiration, the process during which food is metabolized, to get energy for growth and maintenance. People and animals in turn give off carbon dioxide when they respire, a gas which plants need for photosynthesis.
Use a large plant as an example to reinforce this idea. Tie the end of the flexible rubber hose among the plant’s leaves. Whenever a child passes by, she or he can pick up the hose to exhale some carbon dioxide for the plant and inhale some oxygen from the plant. This action symbolizes the life-giving gas cycle between plants and animals.
Activity 2: Making Shelter:
Students will make drawings or models of their home out of cardboard and paper. Then tell them to think of all the materials that the home is made of, such as wood, glass, brick, plastic, cement, and stone. The students and I will figure out which natural resources are used to make the different parts of the home: brick to clay, glass to sand, cement to minerals from rock, plastic to oil, and so on. Students will gather samples the of these natural resources, and the materials that they create, and match them up
Story 2: Four Worlds: The Dine Story of Creation and Southwest Navajo Story
Activity: Students and I will discuss the value of trees and how we can take care of them. Adopt a tree, care for it and plant a tree seed or seedling.
Goal: Students need to understand that trees give us food, oxygen, beauty and wood, among other things, and that they also provide food and shelter for animals. Students need to realize that by nurturing the soil and planting tree seeds and seedlings, we can complete the circle of giving and receiving between trees and people.
I will facilitate a discussion of the value and use of trees and make a list of all those things: wood for building and for heating, beauty, shade, noise reduction; oxygen from the leaves; clean air (leaves filter out particulate pollution); pleasant sound from the wind through the leaves, apples, almonds and other foods for people and animals; homes for animals; erosion protection where roots hold the soil in place; and more.
Activity 2: Adopt a Tree
My students and I will take another nature walk and we will adopt a tree as their very own. During the first visit students will become acquainted with their tree.
- Students will hug their tree to make friends with their tree.
- Students will make bark rubbing using crayons or charcoal and blank newsprints.
- Student will create a leaf print by painting one side of the leaf with tempera paint and then pressing it down gently and thoroughly onto paper to form the leaf pattern
- Students will spend some time blindfolded with their tree to feel the bark, branches, leaves and roots, and listen to the birds and wind overhead. Imagine you are a bird in your tree's branches. What is it like? Find out about the birds and animals living in your tree
- During each visit for this activity, the students can care for the tree by bringing leaves to feed the soil near its roots, by watering the tree, or by cleaning up litter discarded by people in the area around the tree.
- Each time students visit their trees, they will record their observations in their science notebooks.
Story 3: The White Buffalo Calf Woman and the Sacred Pipe by Lakota Sioux- Great Plains.
Activity 1: The Time of Our Lives
Walk a geologic timeline to visualize the great age of the earth and to discuss the immense impact people have had on the environment in a short time that they have walked the earth. Discuss our ability to destroy the Earth with nuclear weapons.
Goals:
Visualize how short human history is relative to earth’s geologic past. Understand what a powerful impact people have had on the earth during the relatively short time that we have existed, and the potential destructive power of nuclear weapons.
Comments: