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Brief Description

This lesson simulates a field trip in which students visit various biomes and perform several sensory activities to learn about the world's ecological communities.

Objectives

Students will construct 3-D biomes. They will develop activities to help their peers experience the biomes. The ultimate goal of this activity is to allow students to be official tour guides and to teach one another about biomes, environmental responsibilities, habitats, and human roles in the various ecosystems.

Key Concepts

biome, ecosystem, interdisciplinary, environment, endangered species, critical thinking, field trip

Materials Needed

Each student needs to make a passport. Some useful materials might include cardboard, construction paper, and glue. Students will carry these passports from biome to biome. Additional material needs will be dictated by the general activities all students will participate in and activities students develop. For example, a making-a-thermometer activity would require plastic bottles, straws, and modeling clay; an activity in which students design a log cabin would require stick pretzels and hot glue. An igloo-making activity might require packing peanuts and glue; sand art would require sand, powdered paints, glue, enlarged photos, cardboard, plastic spoons; and so on.

Lesson Plan

  • Assign each homeroom group to a different biome, such as a savanna, desert, tundra, or rain forest.
  • Each group conducts research on the selected biome. The groups spend from five to seven days conducting research and planning activities for others to participate in when visiting the biome.
  • Students begin collecting materials for their classroom decorations. Each homeroom will decorate the classroom to resemble a selected biome.
  • Encourage all students to bring in materials to contribute to the group presentations. There must be at least five interactive activities in each biome exhibit so that as students visit a biome, they can engage in learning activities. For example, when students visit the rain forest, they might see a puppet show, listen to a native healer, eat dishes prepared from bananas, or walk on logs to simulate the destruction of the rain forest.
  • On the day of the bazaar, every student will have an opportunity to visit all the biomes. At the end of a 30-minute tour, students get their passports stamped and move on to another activity. Prepare a schedule ahead of time so that students know exactly where they need to be every 30 minutes throughout the day.
  • Students are rewarded with stamps for being at their own booths and leading the activities there.
  • Hands-on booths can be set up outside. Students can participate in activities that will challenge their abilities to plot latitude and longitude, calculate population growth, and convert temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius. They might contribute to a biome poem, illustrate environmental pictures using sand art, make thermometers from used plastic bottles, construct a life-sized model of an igloo, enjoy snow cones from the tundra, or categorize animals according to physical structures, adaptation abilities, and symmetry.
  • Academic teachers can also serve as tour guides. They coordinate events in their homerooms, evaluate student behavior and participation, stamp individual passports, and host the biome lunch.
  • The biome lunch is a participatory event. Students have lunch with their homeroom groups. Students will provide lunch, and the foods they contribute must represent their biomes.
  • Parent volunteers can be invited to help with the day's events.
  • Each student will vote on the best-decorated homeroom. Each group will complete an evaluation rubric.

Activity Time

Note: The biome bazaar ended up being a full-day event for the class. Fifteen parents volunteered to cover the booths and monitor students. Students moved from activity to activity every 30 minutes. Each stop offered a variety of activities so that no more than four to six students were at each booth at one time. We also had three computer stations set up in the media center. There, students had 30 minutes to play SimCity, SimFarm, or SimPark. A student had to have the best score at the end of an allotted time to win. The prizes were pens, candy, and suckers.

Assessment

Ask students to evaluate how the events are going and to offer suggestions and feedback.

Lesson Plan Source

Kimberly Emanuel, ([email protected]) Eagles Landing Middle School, McDonough, Georgia


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08/25/2000