Activity Introduction

Activity details: Animals find suitable homes in school grounds. Four activities for gathering survey data help students match how various animals use the school grounds. The focus on plants examines how animals use them.  

Safety: reinforce several times that bees must never be caught and must always be avoided. Bees in Australia cause more deaths than all other combined wildlife including sharks, snakes and spiders. Student should also keep their distance from wasps. 

Key lessons and understandings of activity: Comparing school ground locations by collecting data for species diversity will provide a comparison of biodiversity. Animals have special requirements to be able to live in a specific area. Students will design, collect data and analyse the data from an animal survey.

Module: Biodiversity

Year levels: 5 and 6

Indoor or outdoor activity: Outdoor

Duration of activity: 45 mins

Learning areas addressed: Science, English, The Arts.

Teacher input: Students will need help with collecting and analysing data.

Resources needed: Activity sheets or tablets, collecting jars or plastic petrie, dishes school ground map. Optional: binoculars.

Homework and extension opportunities: None.

Keywords: biodiversity, ecosystem, conservation, audit, survey, species, weeds.

Australian Curriculum Link:

Year 5 Science:

  • With guidance, pose questions to clarify practical problems or inform a scientific investigation, and predict what the findings of an investigation might be (ACSIS231)
  • Compare data with predictions and use as evidence in developing explanations (ACSIS218)

Year 5 Mathematics:

  • Describe and interpret different data sets in context (ACMSP120)

Year 6 Science:

  • With guidance, pose questions to clarify practical problems or inform a scientific investigation, and predict what the findings of an investigation might be (ACSIS232)
  • Compare data with predictions and use as evidence in developing explanations (ACSIS221)

Year 6 Mathematics:

  • Interpret and compare a range of data displays, including side-by-side column graphs for two categorical variables (ACMSP147)

Syllabus Outcomes: ST3-4WS, ST3-10LW, ST3-11LW.

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

Worksheets

Teacher Worksheet

Introduction

Animals need a home. Many are really fussy about where they live and what they can eat. By measuring the number of animal species for different locations in the school, students can show the variation in biodiversity in different school ground habitats. Measuring biodiversity on school grounds can be confusing. It is important to build an understanding of which species are native to the area and which are uninvited weeds.

Students are not expert biologists and can’t be expected to do a comprehensive survey. However, if they use the same survey techniques for different locations, any problems they may have won’t affect their data as students are comparing areas.  

Activity outline

The activity is broken up into five parts:

1. Deciding on the area

2. Survey technique

3. Doing the survey and collecting data

4. Analysing the data

5. Drawing conclusions.

1. Deciding on the area

The school grounds need to be divided into several areas to be surveyed. The areas should

...
 
- or - to view worksheets

Student Worksheet

Data Recording sheet

a) Bird Survey

Which location: 

1. Fill in the data sheet and highlight the behaviour of the birds you see. Mark the number of birds recorded for each type of behaviour exhibited:

Behaviour

Number of birds exhibiting this behaviour

Walking

Flying

Climbing

Feeding

Drinking

Fighting

Resting

Hiding

Sun-bathing

Cleaning/preening

Other

b) Soil or leaf/tree mini beasts survey

Which location: 

1. How many species of mini beasts are there? (This includes the animals caught, plus any distinctive animals that got away.

2. Where do they like to live ? (E.g., on the top of the soil or leaf litter, among dry dead leaves and bark on the surface, among rotting leaves, in soft soil, in hard soil, around roots.)

3. Fill in the data sheet and highlight the behaviour of the mini beasts you find. Mark the number of mini beasts rec

...
 
- or - to view worksheets

Leave your Feedback

We appreciate your feedback. Let us know what you like or don't like about this activity:

Sorry. You must be logged in to view this form.