Observing nature:
pollinators
and flowers
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Remote teaching materials:
We have edited some of our previous teaching materials and designed some new to especially suit remote teaching. Our teaching materials (links below) are suitable for phenomena based teaching in schools, while also offering outdoor activities for everyone interested in nature! Materials include science and art-based exercises which help participants to learn about animal coloration and communication, pollinators and plants, predator-prey interactions, vegetation zones and natural history. Our activities encourage children to go outside to observe and explore nature – whether it is at the park nearby, in your own garden or at a flower pot on the balcony. Teachers can adapt materials and activities to suit the courses and level of their teaching. We have made some suggestions for this. We wish all the best for you in these challenging times! 1. Interactive introduction part (20 – 25 min) – why do flowers have such a diverse array of different colours and shapes? Participants can first brainstorm their own ideas. Next, the teacher can go through the following topics with the help of this slide show: – Why do flowering plants need to get pollinated? How do they attract pollinators? – How does pollination benefit pollinators? – How do pollinators sense the world and colours? – How are humans dependent on the ecosystem service provided by pollinators? You can use video applications (e.g. Zoom, meet, or teams) to go through the introduction for the topic. Alternatively, students can read through the Interactive introduction independently. – – – – – – – – – – 2. Participant’s observations of pollinators and their behaviour Students can choose a place outdoors to make their own observations. They may choose for instance a nearby forest, garden, park or even their balcony. You can modify the tasks according to the participant’s age. For example, more advanced students can use the data they collect to draw graphs (e.g. bar charts) and compare their results based on those graphs. Students can also practice making hypotheses before they collect their data. Observe the behaviour of pollinators! Go outside and monitor what pollinators do! Select one pollinator (e.g. a bumble bee) on a flower and use a timer (e.g. your phone) to record how long the pollinator spends on the flower. Try to identify the plant species the flowers belong to and also mark down the colour of the flowers. You can focus your observations on several bumblebees or choose different pollinator groups (e.g. bees, bumblebees, butterflies, hoverflies, beetles and humming birds) and compare them. Do they visit the same plant species or do they differ in the colour of flowers they prefer? To mark down your observations you can download the Pollinator behaviour data form or use your own notebook. Make your own pollinator species abundance survey! Choose an outdoor area you love and make a survey of the pollinator groups in that area and how many individuals per pollinator group (e.g. how many bumblebees, how many hoverflies, how many hummingbirds) you can find. You can write down whether the pollinator was flying or feeding on the plant when you detected it. You can also mark down what the plant species was. Download the Pollinator survey data form for your notes or use your own notebook. You can compare your notes with your classmates and friends:
A photo-album of pollinators in my favourite place Take photos of different types of pollinators and make a photo album of all the pollinators and flowers in your chosen favourite spot outdoors. Afterwards you can try to identify the pollinator species and the plants they visited based on your photographs. – – – – – – – – – – 3. Pollinator’s day dream You can modify this depending on what is available for your students. Instead of making a collective flower with the group, students can do their own flowers, take a photo of it and tell their classmates what kind of pollinators they want to attract with it. Students can also build their own pollinator’s daydream flower by using different types of (recycled) materials or make a flower mask for themselves. Teachers can collect photos of these different types of flowers or flower masks and combine them to class’s own pollinator’s daydream meadow. You look at pictures from our Instagram for inspiration about the kinds materials you can use, our twitter account or watch the animation by Annantalo animation group from here. – – – – – – – – – – 4. Bees waggle dance Honeybees communicate the location of flowers they find to other bees in the hive by performing a dance! Once the bee has found a good flower with nectar, they return home to the beehive and communicate the location by a waggle dance. They walk around in a figure of eight, which is positioned to correspond to the angle of the sun, to indicate which direction bees should go from the hive to find the flowers. Then they communicate how far away the flowers are by wagging their bodies for a while: if the flower is near, they wag their body for just a little while, and if it's far, the waggle time is longer. Exercise tips at home: – Own dance video: You can go outdoors to perform your own bee waggle dance, and also come up with your own. What would your own dance look like, and what would you like to communicate with it right now, if not the flowers? You can ask your parents to film it and send it over to your loved ones! – Outdoors observations: Go find a nice spot outdoors where you would like to stay and observe the spring life around you for a while. What kinds of different communication do you notice in nature? Are there birds or plants that are communicating? How? For more inspiration for the dance to see here. – – – – – – – – – – 5. Story of my window This exercise is mainly meant for those kids who cannot go outside, or as an alternative indoor observation exercise. Ask your students to choose a friend they would like to work with in a pair: Take a seat by the window and carefully observe the world outside for at least 10 minutes. What are the first signs of spring? Which flowers are blooming first? Can you see some birds? What kinds of plants and trees you can see? And do you see any insects flying around? Do you recognise them? What are their names? What kind of colours and movements can you see? What is the weather like? Children can make notes during their observation and afterwards write text and try to describe the view from the window in as much detail as they can. With help from parents, books and the internet, they can also try to discover the names of species and include them in a story. When “story of the window” is written they will exchange it (by email, whatsapp message etc.) with the friend from their working group: Now you have a story of your classmate’s window. Read the letter carefully, close your eyes and try to imagine. Then take a paper and colours (you choose if you like to paint or draw) and create an illustration of your friend’s window story. When you are done, send a photo of the painting back to your friend. In the end, children can also exchange real photos of their window views, which teachers can collect on the class’s own webpage. – – – – – – – – – – We would love to see the outcomes of these activities! So if you publish them on Instagram or Twitter please tag us (@EvoWorkshops for twitter, #evolution_in_action for instagram) on your publication or send them to us by email: [email protected]. You can also use #storyofmywindow for the pictures and stories in task 5 and #waggledancethroughcorona for your beedancevideo. |
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– – – – – – – – – – Our materials are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. It means you can use our materials freely, but please remember to always credit our work and mention us whenever you are sharing contents of our project online: Instagram: @evolution_in_action, Facebook: @evoluutiopajat, Twitter: @EvoWorkshops. If you use our materials in teaching, we are happy to hear greetings and feedback. You can tag us on social media or send us an email: [email protected] Evolution in Action logo: jpeg, eps |