The story connects this lowly fungus to climate change - the harvest is down significantly, so prices are soaring. It also mentions that spores from imported Chinese truffles have infected some of the truffle sites in Europe - invasive species! I showed the clip to my classes with this document of guiding questions (download it below). They put it all together pretty quickly.
Students choose an aquatic ecosystem in the state of Maine. After in depth research into the health of that ecosystem, students share their findings. This rubric and instruction sheet guide students as they work independently on their research.
This is a fun game where participants explore habitat and nesting bird sites with regard to invasive species. Specifically, it addresses the competition between native birds and invasive bird species when it comes to habitat resources and predators.
Here is an assessment that I used for my classes after they finished their Vital Signs Investigations. They evaluate how well their team cooperated and shared the responsibilities for this project. I also ask them to evaluate the program and to give suggestions to make this better for them.
> This is a sheet to record going through the process of rotating through a brief introduction of the skills. It has 8 skills on there; however, we did 2 rounds of 4 and 4. This is a brief summary and insight of what one of the rounds looked like for us.
In essence: in a 2 hour period, we each saw 150-200 students for a skill session. (Guy: GPS, Joan: Quadrat/Species Cards, Sandy: Observation Sketches, Joelle: Camera) Now, it wasn't pretty; but, we did it again the following
Friday, with the other 4 skills! :) And, certainly, armed with more strategies.
This is a rubric to help guide students when creating a culminating activity for the Vital Signs invasive species Comic Life project and help teachers score it.
This is the ppt presentation I used to outline my ideas after I played Oh Deer (we called it Oh Bluebird!) with my students.
We started class with video highlights from the game we had played last class. Then we discussed the contents of the slideshow slowly - taking breaks on data slides for students to graph the information on mini whiteboards. I walked around directing struggling students how graph it.
We ended with discussion on invasive species and the time lapse video of knotweed growth.
Use the species cards to translate and bridge the gap between them and the use of dichotomous keys in classification. Have students use the keys and cards to create mini keys that would help to identify the species that they are studying in the field.
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