Teacher Preparation

Activity outline

In this exercise, your students will shade habitats onto a map of the school grounds. To do this, they will need to:

1. Decide on what kind of habitats are in the school grounds and what they will call the habitats.

See what other schools are doing by exploring a case studyhere.

School habitats

Students may need to have a quick walk around their school to decide what type of habitats there are. Some of the common school ground habitats are:

Garden beds with shrubs
Garden bed with flowers
Lawn
Trees with grass underneath
Trees with plants underneath
Trees with leaf litter or mulch underneath
Grassy oval
Gully
Vegetable garden
Wet gully or bog
Pond
Revegetated forest
Native grass bed
Gravel
Weed infested area.

Decide which habitats occur in the school.

1. Find a map of the school grounds that can be copied. Make a legend. Write down the different habitats that occur in the school (use a separate piece of paper if there isn’t room on the map). Make sure each habitat is clearly marked on the map.

Biodiversity hotspots

Students now need to locate the biodiversity 'hot spot' of the school. The hot spot is the habitat with the greatest species diversity (number and abundance of organisms). Use the map to help organise the students’ data collection. They need to make sure all the habitats are covered. It is important that each habitat is observed for the same amount of time by the same number of students. Get students to work out a method for achieving this. How will they solve the problems?

Identify how long students will observe the different habitats around the school.

Students can record data on the number of different living things they have found:

- Moss

- Grasses

- Trees

- Fungus

- Shrubs

- Insects

- Spiders

- Other small creatures

- Birds

- Lizards

- Frogs.

Using the data

As a class bring all the data together. Is there an area that clearly has more biodiversity than others?

Compare the subtotals. What do student think will attract animals?

Map the school environment

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Summary

Learning intentions:

Students will...

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Lesson Details

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