Flipped classroom - How do bees help plants?

Activity Introduction

Quick summary: This lesson is designed for a flipped classroom, where students learn new content by watching a video in their own time. This strategy provides the opportunity for students to build their knowledge, attitudes and values by themselves, thereby freeing up class time for hands-on work.

Learning goals:

Students understand the role that bees and other pollinating animals play in helping plants grow and reproduce.
Students recognise that bees and other pollinating animals have a critical role to play in providing humans with food.
Students build their thinking and questioning skills.

General capabilities: Critical and creative thinking.

Australian Curriculum content descriptions:

Year 7 Science

Interactions between organisms can be described in terms of food chains and food webs; human activity can affect these interactions (ACSSU112)

Year 7 Design and Technologies

Analyse how food and fibre are produced when designing managed environments and how these can become more sustainable (ACTDEK032)

Year 8 Design and Technologies

Analyse how food and fibre are produced when designing managed environments and how these can become more sustainable (ACTDEK032)

Year 9 Science

Ecosystems consist of communities of interdependent organisms and abiotic components of the environment; matter and energy flow through these systems (ACSSU176)

Year 9 Design and Technologies

Investigate and make judgments on the ethical and sustainable production and marketing of food and fibre (ACTDEK044)

Year 10 Geography

The human-induced environmental changes that challenge sustainability (ACHGK070)

Year 10 Design and Technologies

Investigate and make judgments on the ethical and sustainable production and marketing of food and fibre (ACTDEK044)

Syllabus Outcomes: GE5-2, GE5-3, SC4-15LW, SC5-14LW, SC4-13ES.

Time needed: 20 minutes.

Level of teacher scaffolding: Low – allow students to explore the topic independently.

Resources required: Internet, laptops and earphones, Student Worksheet.

Key words: Bees, birds, butterflies, bats, pollination, reproduction, plants, flowers.

Cool Australia’s curriculum team continually reviews and refines our resources to be in line with changes to the Australian Curriculum.

Worksheets

Teacher Worksheet

Teacher Preparation

Overarching learning goal: Students take responsibility for their own learning by watching a video on bees and plant pollination and completing a thinking routine.

The Flipped Lesson

This lesson provides the opportunity for students to explore/build their current knowledge, attitudes and values about the importance of bees to our food systems and to our environment. While working independently, students are to view the video and complete the table below. Teachers will also gain insight from students’ responses which can be used to plan follow-up lessons from the biodiversity or consumption units.

This visual thinking tools can be useful in examining how and why student thinking has changed based on learning specific content information. It also helps to develop their reasoning abilities and to recognise cause and effect relationships.

How bees help plants have sex - Fernanda S. Valdovinos (https://youtu.be/Y5uRVv7GGQM)

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Student Worksheet

Thought Starter: What's happening to the honey bee?

Before the video

Why do you think the honey bee is important?

Watch the video

How bees help plants have sex - Fernanda S. Valdovinos (https://youtu.be/Y5uRVv7GGQM)

After the video

In 35 words or less, write a summary of this video:

Use the internet to find out why the worlds bee populations are declining. Get to the root of the problem using the the 5 why's.

Why are bee populations declining?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?

To summarise:

The cause of the bee population decline is:

The impact of this decline is:

What can you do to help stop the decline of bee populations:

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Activity: Flipped classroom – How do bees help plants?

Activity Introduction