Biology Class Activity Ideas?

Question

In my Biology class everyone has to teach the rest of the class about an aspect of ecology. My aspect is ecosystems and niches. We all also have to have an activity for the class to do to help them learn. Does anyone have an idea for a game or something. By the way, this is tenth grade bio, so it should probaly be something at that level. Thanks.

Answer 1

How about something like this: Classmates are divided into three different species that feed on three types of beans (red, navy, and black). The ‘species’ compete in three different environments to see who wins the most beans acquiring beans.

Set up three environments:

1. Diverse environment with unlimited resources (three types of beans & more beans than can be collected during the game)
2. Low diversity environment – limited resources (two types of beans that will run out before game is over; use only red and navy)
2. Diverse environment with an abundance of black beans and shortage of read and navy beans

Divide class into three ‘species’ that have different niches:

1. Red bean specialist – may collect 4 red beans or any combination of 3 black or navy beans
2. Navy bean specialist – may collect 4 navy beans or any combination of 3 black or red beans
3. Bean generalist – may collect 2 pairs of any bean type, 4 beans of a single type, or three beans of any type if the two previous choices aren’t available.


To Set up the game:

1) Set up one table for each of the three environments, with a deck of cards on each table and bowls of beans on the tables as follows:

Table 1: three bowls, each with 1 measuring cup full of one type of bean.
Table 2: two bowls, one with a half cup of red beans, one with a half cup of black beans
Table 3: three bowls, one with a half cup of red beans, one with a ½ cup of navy beans, and
one with one cup of black beans.

2) Divide the class into three ‘species’
3) Each species then divides up into three different teams (one team at each table)

To Play:

Option 1:
1) The deck of cards is placed face down on the table and each team draws one card. The team with the highest card gets to collect beans.
2) Play continues until the beans are gone and any one of the tables.

Option 2:
Use a game like blackjack (Twentyone) to decide who gets to draw beans out of the bowl. With this approach, each tesm is dealt 3 cards, and they have the option of collecting additional cards if they want. The team closest to 21 without going over, is the winner of the hand.

After the game, have each table explain their strategies and how the game turned out. Also have them explain how the similarities and differences with real world environments and real species.

Answer 2

I would approach it like this: get them to act out what happens when an animal with an important niche is removed. Or, when an animal is placed somewhere that's not its niche.

For example, get some people to be ducks, fish, and plants in a pond. Show how they all stay in equilibrium because ducks eat plants, which keeps plants from overgrowing the pond, which allows fish to live. Then show that if there's too many ducks and they eat all the plants, there's nowhere for fish to hide. Or, show that if there's no ducks, the plants don't get eaten and they overgrow the pond and there's no room for the fish.

Or show cane toads in South America, where fish, snakes, and rats eat them and keep them in check. Then show how people took them to Australia, to eat pests, but how the population exploded because none of the predators there can eat them.

It's all about showing how things fit as they are, and changes to any niche has effects on other niches.

Answer 3

one of the ways i can think of is that you can ask the group to do a video. like either you and your group go out to nature and record the actual niches of the animals and show it to the class. after that, you make-up a game such as matching and ask the class to see if they have learn something after your presentation.

or instead of record the actual niches of the animals ecosystems, you and your group can "be" the animals and act out and bring the video to class or like one person already answer you can act out.

but keep in mind that try to be a little humor at the same time, because i have seen that children nowadays get bore if teachers only give information too much. try to light up the environment and teach them something at the same time.

good luck with the project.

Answer 4

Watching anime =( I re watched the entire seasons of dragonball (z)(gt) and cardcaptor sakura this last summer. I'm 21 by the way. So yea, got sooooo obsessed that I even started reading mangas. Now I spend at least 2 hours a day reading mangas before I go to sleep. I feel like a loser. I'm also a huge gamer. I spend like 2 hours a day playing nintendo.