Activities

Labs

Links

National Standards

Activities

• A biodiversity activity from the San Diego Zoo.
• "Biodiversity Surey" is a unit survey using the school grounds and takes approximately 12-14 school days.
• The "BIO-RING" activity investigates biodiversity and biomass on the school grounds.  A worksheet to record results is included.
• "Biodiversity Around Our School" is another activity to investigate the biodiversity of your school grounds.
• The "Exploring Biodiversity"  workbook has ideas and guidlines for exploring biodiversity in your neighborhood.
• "The Biodiversity Dilemma" has a database activity and writing assignment along with a teacher lesson plan.
• Do this "Biological Diversity and Conservation"  wordsearch puzzle with answers .
• Have students do the Glencoe "Vanishing Species"  and "Conservation of Biodiversity"  worksheets.
• The lab in this Teacher's Domain lesson (You must register for free to access) could be started while studying "Population Growth," The lab involves growing duckweed over a 2 or 3 week period, but students also compare it's growth to that of other invasive species shown in the included videos.
• A "Global Warming: Early Warning Signs" curriculum guide includes many activities.
• Show students the "BioDaVersity Code" video, a take-off on "The Diversity  Code."  The video explains in a clever way why it is important to maintain biodiversity.
  
• Have students download and play "Power Up."  In the game the planet "Helios"  is facing ecological devastation and you're in a race against time to save the planet. The game was designed by a group of young people with help from IBM.  It is a great way to learn about our ecological problems. (However, the game requires 1 gig of ram)

  
  

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  Labs

• Do the American Field Guide's "English Ivy-Landscape Plant or Deadly Killer" acitivity.  It includes a "Restoring Wildlife Habitat" video that can be played using Real Player or the Window's Media Player.  The whole activity is in  form and I have produced my own documents for the lab , the lab answers , the maps , the grid , and pictures of the invasive plants .  I suggest laminating the plant maps and pictures of the plants for future use.
• Try this "Biodiversity In Ponds" lab with "Pond Identification Sheet" and scoring rubric.
• The Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum has many biodiversity activities in its "Reflections on Earth: Biodiversity and Remote Sensing"  teacher's guide.  I produced this "Biodiversity Lab"  with teacher notes  and lab key  from this Smithsonian guide.
• If students have access to computers on the internet, try Glencoe's, "Researching Information on Exotic Pets"  Internet BioLab.  Mrs. Rebello has created an "Exotic Pets" worksheet  which has a better link for finding the information that students need.

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  Links

• Enter the local zip code and the site will load the trees, mammals, amphibians, and wildflowers found in the area. A comprehensive set of field guides are also available for trees, mammals, amphibians, wildflowers, and much more: http://www.enature.com/home/ 
• Learn about the importance of plant conservation and the preservation of the rainforest: http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/Research/unseengarden/matrix1.shtml 
• Biodiversity in the Indian River Lagoon: http://www.sms.si.edu/IRLSpec/index.htm 
• Take a virtual endangered species field trip: http://www.field-trips.org/sci/endanger/index.htm 
• Learn about island biogeography and fragmentation: http://www.bagheera.com/inthewild/spot_spisland.htm 
• Biodiversity of Mexico: http://www.vivanatura.org/ 
• of biodiversity in the Florida Everglades with great photos: http://fire.biol.wwu.edu/trent/alles/Everglades.pdf 
• "Bagheera," a website for endangered species: http://www.bagheera.com/ 
• The Mass government "Biodiversity Days" website has a biodiversity database and information: http://maps.massgis.state.ma.us/Biodiversity/BiodiversityDays.htm 
• The American Museum of Natural History's biodiversity site: http://www.amnh.org/nationalcenter/it_takes_all_kinds/index.html 
• The World Wildlife Fund's  "Wildfinder":  http://www.worldwildlife.org/wildfinder/ 
• Conservation Internations's "Diversity Hotspots": http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org/xp/Hotspots 
• "Speciation and Biodiversity" discusses the development of new species and includes educator resources: http://actionbioscience.org/biodiversity/wilson.html 
• The "Tree of Life" web project provides information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their evolutionary history (phylogeny), and characteristics: http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html 
• Animal diversity web: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/ 
• The World Conservation Union's "Red List" of threatened species: http://www.iucnredlist.org/ 
• The website for "An Inconvenient Truth" includes a study guide: http://www.aninconvenienttruth.com.au/truth/
  

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