Jennifer B. Esty
Later in this unit students will explore the relationship between human land management techniques and species diversity. To study this relationship, students will take trips to several different ecosystems and do biodiversity studies. However, before the students take the trips, they need to generate a list of species that they expect to see. This will help them to more quickly identify many of the organisms they will encounter on the trips.
As mentioned earlier, many of my students are legitimately absent for several weeks at a time. They will, therefore, need slightly different lessons than the students who can be expected to attend classes regularly. In this section, you will find two different sets of plans, one for students in school and one for students at home.
The goal of this section of the curriculum unit is the same for both groups of students, those at home and those at school. At this point in the curriculum unit the students will prepare a list of organisms that can be expected to live in the different ecosystems they will study. The students will be expected to list the organisms by local common name and possibly by scientific name. They will also list the type of habitat where they might expect to see the organisms.
In Class
Most of my students on any given day are in class. So the majority of my students will go through this section of the curriculum unit.
Peabody Museum
There are two things that I hope to get out of a full day trip to the Peabody museum. First, the museum has an extensive collection of preserved plants and animals. I would like to have the staff give the girls some ideas about what they might see in the local ecosystems. While I realize that preserved plants are hard to picture three dimensionally, my hope is that the staff at the museum will be able to give the students some tips on differentiating similar species and identifying some of the more common local species. Additionally, it is far easier to observe a stuffed bird than one that is flitting about the tree tops. Again, I hope that the staff at the museum will be able to show the students some simple ways to differentiate similar common species of birds and other local animals.
The second task for the students at the museum is related to their pregnancies. Their task is to choose two exhibits that they would like to bring their child to come see. They will write about why they chose their exhibits and explain how they think their child will benefit from the exhibits. Many of my students have never been to the Peabody museum outside of occasional school trips, which is a shame because it has so much to offer and is free on Thursday afternoons.
Beardsley Zoo
The Beardsley Zoo has an interesting program where they will bring small animals to classrooms. Outside of Bridgeport they will charge for the mileage they have to drive, but otherwise the service is free. Ordinarily, I would be inclined to bring the students to the zoo, but having the zoo come to us is an amazingly convenient option for my students for several reasons. First, it is very expensive to get a bus to anyplace outside the city limits, and, second, there are time limitations which make trips outside the city difficult. However, since the zoo is willing to come to my classroom it opens up huge new possibilities. I would like the students to see some of the animals they may encounter in some to the ecosystems. The zoo staff will be able to explain the habits of the animals they bring and will be able to give some advice about where the students might expect to see the animals. The students, of course, will be able to see the animals up close and learn to identify them.
In addition to seeing the animals, the students will again write about what they would like to see at the zoo with their children. Bridgeport is not very far and the zoo admission is very reasonable.
At Home
All of my students at some point in time will have legitimate reasons for not being in school. Sometimes these absences are for very long periods of time. In other cases the absences are as little as two weeks after the delivery of the baby. However, because every student may be absent at some time, this section of the unit can be used in part or its entirety as the particular case dictates.
Students who are homebound will unfortunately miss out on the trip to the Peabody museum and the visit from the Beardsley zoo. They will, however, be able to carry out similar tasks to those of their class mates. They will read excerpts from several different text books about several different habitats. From these readings students will be expected to identify organisms that exist in different trophic levels of each ecosystem. The students will also be expected to discuss how much human land management they would expect to find in a typical example of each of the ecosystems they read about.
The reading level of each of the text excerpts can be carefully tailored to the reading ability of each student. Some of the texts can even be offered in Spanish for those students who are new arrivals and have yet to learn English well enough to express themselves.
Tying the expectations and prior knowledge together
The students will each select an organism from the New England forest to study. For my homebound students may be an extra credit assignment because of the difficulty of getting research materials. However, the students who will be in class will be required to find an image of the animal a write a one page piece about the organism's habits and how they fit into the forest ecosystem. The students will choose their organisms before we go to the museum and have the zoo visit so that they can collect information from the activities. The animal pictures and papers will go onto a wall organized according to tropic level with string connecting the different organisms into a food web. This section of the unit addresses several New Haven Science Standards, 3.6b, 3.4b, and 1.2a.