Lesson Plan #2
In this second lesson we wanted to focus on Differentiating survival skills in a specific ecosystem. We carried out the lesson through the LES (Launch Explore Summarize) Method. By the end of the lesson we wanted the students to be able to:
- List groups of animals that live within an ecosystem.
- Describe strategies that animals use to survive.
To carry out this lesson we needed to have the students to have background knowledge on the familiarity of the different physical characteristics, temperature, and resources a specific ecosystem might have. They should be familiar of the groups of animals that could live there. Also, they must be familiar on what is necessary for something to survive.
Before you decide to jump right into the lesson, here is a brief overview on how we wished to carry out the lesson: “The teacher will explain and discuss the tundra Ecosystem in detail, with an example of animals that live there and how they survive. The students will be separated into five groups. Each group will be given the same ecosystem, the tundra, which will be displayed on the whiteboard. However, the groups will be assigned different groups of animals, that were not discussed earlier in the examples. The groups will all be presented with the same problem: Your group of animals is being challenged either by the weather or a group of predators. How will they survive together in their ecosystem? During the explore, the groups must research how that group of animals will survive. Later, we will come back together as a whole class to collect each groups data. “.
Throughout this lesson we chose to focus on the Tundra Ecosystem: a treeless, arctic region which has a permanently frozen layer below the soil. If you want to read a more in depth description of this lesson, click here: Differentiating survival skills in a specific ecosystem