Middle School Ecology

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Middle School Ecology Evolution Curricula

• Matthew L. Richardson

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Classes

• Urbana Middle School 8th grade science
• Campus Middle School for Girls 8th grade
  environmental science
• Campus Middle School for Girls 7th grade animal
  biology

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Outline of Units

• Abiotic vs. biotic
• a. Effects of chemistry on organisms
• Predator prey
• Food chains
• Biodiversity
• Adaptation
• Community ecology
• Allopatric and sympatric speciation
• Cospeciation
• Biomes

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Plan for 2007-2008

• Focus on the ecology curricula
• Eight of the units will be reused
• Six are complete or need minor additions
• Two submitted to The American Biology Teacher
• Two need major revision
• Add a unit on morphological variations
• The ecology curricula encompass 1 semester and
  cover many major ecological themes

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Plan for 2007-2008 cont.

• Multiple schools
• UMS Fall 2007
• TBD Spring 2008
• Solicit funds/materials
• Solo Corporation
• IDNR
• Entomological Society of America
• Submit two more lessons for potential publication
• British Journal of Education Technology
• Journal of Biological Education

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Plants - Aphids Predators -Temperature

• Students learn about
• biotic and abiotic regulation of aphid
  populations
• complex interactions
• how to design an experiment

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Methods

• Students were given goldenrod and aphids
• They selected abiotic and biotic features to add
  to the goldenrod and aphid system.
• Various natural enemies
• Temperature

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Methods

• Each group had two plants
• Each group put aphids on each plant. One
  predator was put on one plant (the other plant
  was a control, so it did not have predators).

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Methods

• Mesh bags enclosed the plant and arthropods
• Plants were exposed to either high or low
  temperature
• Students counted aphids after 2 weeks

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Results
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But
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(No Transcript)
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Teacher Concerns

• Time
• Accessible materials
• Plants
• Aphids
• Temperature
• Affordable materials
• Mesh bags

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Sound Production in Insects Morphological
Variations

• Sound production plays a major role in
  interactions among insects.
• Sound production is achieved in various ways and
  we will use Bugscope to view these variations.
• Bugscope is an educational outreach program for
  K-12 classrooms which allows access to a scanning
  electron microscope (SEM).
• Classes remotely operate the SEM in real time
  from their classroom computers to image organisms
  at high magnification.

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Materials

• Remotely operate a SEM
• View
• cricket (scraper and file on wings)
• Madagascar hissing cockroach (trachea)
• cicada (tymbal)
• click beetle (prosternum spine)
• longhorn beetle (scraper and file)

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Evaluation

• Write-up of the activity
• discuss how each insect produces sound and the
  function or adaptive value of the sound
• discuss whether the signals are used in the
  following ways
• Recognition - species, individuals, neighbors,
  castes, kin
• Reproduction - courtship, female choice or
  receptivity
• Agonistic interactions - territoriality (song),
  predator/prey

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Bugscope Goals

• Design multiple lessons for this unit
• Keep adding on at each school during each
  Bugscope session
• Publish multiple activities that could take
  advantage of this technology and would be an
  interesting and useful publication for other
  school districts

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The End

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