Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

15 mins

Tune In: How do habitats change?

20 mins

Find Out: What are the impacts of change?

20 mins

Take Action: Exploring Impacts

5 mins

Reflection

Tune In: How do habitats change?

Preparation

If your class hasn’t completed Lesson 1 in this unit - What is a habitat?, conduct a quick brainstorm of some different habitats (swamp, forest, ocean, desert, etc.) and what factors differ from habitat to habitat (temperature, animals, plants, rainfall, etc.)

Step 1

Now we know what a habitat is, let’s look at how they change throughout the year as seasons change, using the 'Think, Pair, Share' method.

Assign pairs of students with a factor from the list below and ask them to think about how this factor changes for where they live. Some of these are easier than others! Ensure the first four are covered, and get to the others if possible. They can use the student worksheet to record their ideas.

temperature (easy)
precipitation/rainfall (easy)
plants (medium)
animals (medium)
sunlight (harder)
soil/ground (harder)

Give them time to jot down their initial ideas on the student worksheet, and then give them time to share their ideas with their partner. Once they have discussed their ideas with their partner, let’s share them as a class. While their answers will vary based on where they live, some of their ideas might include:

Summer:

Temperature	Sometimes very hot. We go swimming to cool down.
Rainfall	Dry, sometimes thunderstorms. We have to water the veggie garden every day.
Plants	Grass and other plants turn brown, danger of fires. We grow tomatoes in our garden and have to water them.
Animals	I can hear cicadas at night. My dog sleeps under the house in the shade.
Sunlight	Very bright. Sunrises early and sets late. We have to wear our hats to school.
Soil/ground	Hard dusty ground, very dry soil. The grass turns yellow and flat.

Autumn:

Temperature	Cooling down and very windy. Sometimes, we have a bonfire in the backyard to warm up.
Rainfall	Still dry with some rain.
Plants	Some trees lose their leaves
Animals	The birds that nest on the roof of our shed leave
Sunlight	The light is beautiful and golden and soft.
Soil/ground	The ground gets covered up by leaves sometimes.

Winter:

Temperature	So cold! We wear jumpers and long pants to school and light the fire at home.
Rainfall	Lots of rain, sometimes hail. We don’t ever water the garden!
Plants	Some trees lose their leaves, but grass and weeds grow a lot. We grow broccoli in our garden
Animals	Some animals migrate, and some hibernate.
Sunlight	Days are very short. I have to get up when it is dark.
Soil/ground	Very wet and muddy. Soft soil and no dust.

Spring:

Temperature	Warming up but with cold days and lots of rain. We wear shorts and shirts to school.
Rainfall	Sometimes it rains but the weather is sunnier.
Plants	Plants and trees have flowers.
Animals	Lots of baby animals around! Lots of birds and insects too. My dog sheds lots of fur.
Sunlight	We start to get more sunny days, and we start wearing our hats at school again.
Soil/ground	So many things are growing it's hard to see the ground!

Extension: European settlers brought the idea of Summer, Autumn, Spring and Winter with them. Indigenous Australians have their interpretation of seasons, with sometimes as few as 2 (wet/dry) or as many as 6 different seasons. The Bureau of Meteorology has a great website with more information about specific areas and the indigenous seasons. Students could compare their observations of changes with those described on the website.

Find Out: What are the impacts of change?

Step 1

We have looked at changes that happen over an annual cycle, but sometimes changes happen over a much longer or a much shorter time frame. Let’s take a look at one.

Show students this video of flood waters rising in Queensland

Timelapse shows train line engulfed by rising flood waters - Guardian News (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRIm3wqKVJ0)

That was a lot of change in a short time. What changes did we see to the environment in this time? Students may mention:

water where there wasn’t water before (the obvious one)
soil being washed away
mulch and other ground cover being washed away
maybe the water is bringing salt or pollutants to the area
the animals are gone, either washed away or flown away/left

Step 2

Let’s think about some other environmental changes that can happen, either in a short time frame or a much longer one. Students may suggest:

bushfires	air pollution	soil erosion	heatwaves
droughts	melting ice caps and glaciers	ocean acidification	volcanic eruption
oil spills	rising sea levels	light pollution	global warming
development	revegetation	severe storms	ice ages

This list could nearly go forever! Once you have a good number of suggestions, take a pause and ask students to sort the list into natural habitat change events and human-induced habitat change events.

This is not as straightforward as you may first think. Nearly every natural event can also be human-induced, for example, bushfires may start from random lighting strikes, or they may start from an abandoned campfire. In the next lesson, we will explore human-induced habitat change, but for now, let’s look at some naturally occurring events.

Step 3

What impacts do these events have on the plants and animals living in them?

Have students select one of the naturally occurring habitat change events below in small groups or individually. Using the student worksheet, they will look at the changes this event causes in different elements of the habitat and the flow on effects of that change.

For example, floods. One change is that the flood water removes the leaf little and ground cover. The impact is that there is now less cover and food for small mammals, making them vulnerable to predation. The flow-on effect is that there will be fewer small mammals, which means less food for predators, which means their predators will either need to leave or switch to a different food source.

volcanic eruption
bushfire
ice age
severe storm
drought
soil erosion
beach sand erosion
heatwave

Encourage students to look beyond negative consequences. Fire is a great example. While bushfires can have devastating effects, much of Australia’s flora has evolved to exist with fire. Many types of seeds have germination inhibitors, which means they won’t start to grow until they are exposed to either heat or smoke.

Step 4

Have students match up with another student/group that looked at the same event as them. Did they pick up the same changes? What were the differences?

Take Action: Exploring impacts

Step 1

As we can see, there can be a lot of impacts and flow on effects from these events. There is another element of these environments that is impacted… us!

How does this event impact humans? Using the student worksheet, ask students to consider the impacts of this event on our food, water, air, and shelter.

Learning support: This can either get very abstract or stay very concrete. For students who are just starting to pick up these concepts, keep the impacts very concrete. E.g. a bushfire would burn a wheat field and destroy our food, leading to food shortages. For students who need an extension, you can push the idea further. Yes, the fire has burnt the wheat now, but it also wiped out a mouse population that was impacting production rates. This, combined with the energy and nutrients the fire put back into the soil, might mean the next few crops are much better than they would have been. But what does wiping out the mouse mean for the rest of the ecosystem? What are the predators who ate the mouse going to eat now? You can follow these ripple effects almost forever! It can be a great way to demonstrate how ecosystems are interconnected and how one change impacts many things.

Step 2

Just as humans are impacted by these changes, we can have an impact on these events as well.

Show your students this video that discusses how cultural burning practices have an impact on bushfires.

1. Historical burning (https://vimeo.com/79466988/93a5e48311?share=copy)

Let’s return to our event and consider which people can impact these events. It will help to think in terms of before, during, and after. Which jobs are responsible for preventing, tracking or managing the event? Which jobs are responsible for responding to the event? Which jobs are responsible for cleaning up and helping out after the event?

For example - Floods

Before:

meteorologists (tracking and reporting weather patterns)
town planners (looking at historical data and planning for possibilities)

During:

SES and emergency response teams
News reporters (for notifying and keeping people up to date)

After:

rangers and land management organisations (managing and tracking recovery)
construction workers (repairing and rebuilding)

Reflection

We have discovered that while environmental change can be destructive, it can also be rejuvenating and processes needed by the natural environment.

Pose the following question to your students.

When do you think we should interfere with natural habitat change? Why do you think this?

When do you think we should interfere with natural habitat change? Why do you think this?

How Do Habitats Change?

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