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.
- Try this "Biodiversity" crossword puzzle from
the New York Times with answers.
- Try "Tree Mapping" on your school grounds
as an exploration of biodiversity.
- "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 your students "The BioDaversityCode" video clip, and amusing visual metaphor for the web of life. It's a take-off of The DaVinci Code created by The Center for Health and Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.
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.
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 International's "
Investigate Biodiversity": http://investigate.conservation.org/xp/IB
- 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.redlist.org/
- The
website for "An Inconvenient Truth" includes a study guide: http://www.aninconvenienttruth.com.au/truth/
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