Activity Overview
Insect Shake allows students to collaboratively carry out an investigation of ecological communities. Students discover the similarities and differences between biodiversity in small but distinct communities, and get experience in observation. It ultimately allows for group discussion of questioning, forming hypotheses, observing, and collecting and analyzing data. In group discussions, students will get some practice with using observations to form explanations about community biodiversity.
Teacher Background
Habitats are comprised of several smaller communities of biotic and abiotic factors. Each community contains specific plants and animals that provide food and shelter to support the members within it. These communities can be broad, like the scrub community within the coastal sand dune habitat, which includes the scrub plants, the soil they grow in, and the animals that interact with them. They can also be very small, like a single scrub plant that in itself contains a community of interacting insect species. A community can be specified as a single bush or hole, or as a larger area such as an oak woodland.
When we observe birds in the mudflats and then compare them to birds in the uplands, we notice many differences. Some of the differences are more obvious than others. For example, differences in beak size and shape, body shape, and behavior are easier to see, but differences in feathers and feet can be more difficult to notice.
What about insects? Can you visualize the differences between a spider and a tick, or a moth and a fly? These smaller entities require a larger focus to notice the differences that define their roles in the ecosystem.
All animals are important contributors to their communities, despite size or phylum. Within each habitat, as well as within each community, there are various niches and roles to be played. Animals and plants find ways to live in a habitat or community by adapting to a specific niche. Animals and plants within a specified area are communities. Animals and plants within a community - just like your neighborhood - interact and give and receive ecological services.
Key Concept: Habitat communities contain specific plants and animals that provide food and shelter to support the members of that community.
Key Definition: A community is an assemblage of plants and animals that are found together in a certain area. Communities can be large (Monterey Bay) or small (Coyote Bush)
Warm up (in the classroom or at the Reserve)
Introduce the concept of biodiversity to your students according to their grade. Ask them whether biodiversity is the same everywhere – do all habitats have the same species living in them? Do habitats with similar organisms have the same quantity of each? Ask students to brainstorm how they might make and answer these questions (help guide them towards ways they could answer using the materials provided). Introduce the Key Concept.
The Activity
1. Pick a place at Elkhorn Slough that has easy-to-access plants with observable differences and review with students the need to compare organisms in a community.
2. Ask them to think/pair/share whether or not a single plant could hold a community.
3. Give students 7 minutes to explore the site you’ve picked, looking at the plants for a) evidence of other species using the plants as habitat, and b) observable differences between them (feel free to give examples).
4. Gather back together and let students share-out their observations. Have them think/pair/share what questions they have about the differences they observed as they relate to the diversity of the communities in the plants. Write their questions up on a whiteboard or piece of cardboard.
5. Introduce the materials you have to work with – sheets, hand lenses, and magnifying boxes.
6. Demonstrate how you can use the materials to analyze a community in a plant: carefully shake a plant branch over the sheet, and use the hand lens to look at and document what came out.
7. Ask students if there are questions on the board they could answer using these methods and materials Circle questions they think they can answer and cross out questions they think they can’t answer (come to these decisions as a class).
8. Divide students into groups of 2-6 and in their groups, ask them to come to an agreement on one of the questions they generated as a class to study.
9. Once a group has selected a question, they must write it out and agree on what data they will collect. Then they take materials and begin their study, taking note of the differences (or variables) they are studying and the resulting effects on diversity they expect to find. Guide groups in how to shake branches without breaking them as needed.
10. Students can use hand lenses and magnifying boxes to analyze insects, seeds, and other things that fall out of their community, but depending on age they may need help with understanding how to use them. Make sure to free any bugs that are put into the magnifying boxes at the end of the activity.
11. Gather students together and share their questions and observations.
12. If age appropriate, have groups make a rough graph or chart to organize their data and look for patterns.
Clean-up: Be sure to return all plants/animals to their appropriate habitats. Shake the sheets and check the magnifying boxes to insure that all animals have been released. Collect all equipment and make sure to do a quick tick check.
Wrap Up
Re-introduce to students the key concept: Habitat communities contain specific plants and animals that provide food and shelter to support the members of that community. Discuss this concept in light of what they’ve discovered, with groups using their test results as evidence for their answers. Did their question and test support this concept? Has their study generated more questions? Ask for one group as a volunteer to share their question, test, and results and have the other groups think/pair/share ways they could change/improve their test. If any groups had results that were far off from what they expected, have them share and ask students to think/pair/share problems in their testing that could be creating a data divergence.
è Extension:
· Have students draw their communities and create a visual depiction of the way the organisms in their communities might interact.
Assessment
Have students:
· Describe a way to test a question/create a question from an observation
· Use an observation to answer a question
· Evaluate a scientific study for potential problems or improvements
· Explain the key concept of a community, and how it can vary in size and composition
Science and Engineering practices / Disciplinary Core Ideas / Cross-Cutting ConceptsPlanning and Carrying Out Investigations
Planning and carrying out investigations in K-2 builds on prior experiences and progresses to simple investigations, based on fair tests, which provide data to support explanations or design solutions.
•Plan and conduct an investigation collaboratively to produce data to serve as the basis for evidence to answer a question.
•Make observations and/or measurements to collect data that can be used to make comparisons.
•Evaluate different ways of observing and/or measuring a phenomenon to determine which way can answer a question.
Planning and carrying out investigations in 3-5 builds on K-2 experiences and progresses to include investigations that control variables and provide evidence to support explanations or design solutions.
•Plan and conduct an investigation collaboratively to produce data to serve as the basis for evidence, using fair tests in which variables are controlled and the number of trials considered.
•Make observations and/or measurements to produce data to serve as the basis for evidence for an explanation of a phenomenon.
•Evaluate appropriate methods and/or tools for collecting data. / LS4.D Biodiversity and Humans
•A range of different organisms lives in different places.
•Populations of organisms live in a variety of habitats. Change in those habitats affects the organisms living there. / Patterns
•K-2: Patterns in the natural world can be observed, used to describe phenomena, and used as evidence.
•3-5: Patterns can be used as evidence to support an explanation.
Next Generation Science Standards