- What makes our schoolyard a healthy habitat for us human beings as well as for other creatures that live among us? What can make it a healthier habitat?
That is one Driving Questions for a seventh grade PBL project related to their Interactions in the Environment science unit. The specifics can be found in the Seventh Grade Field Trips At School post, including how it can involve a collaboration with sixth grade.
- How has the development of our school's property changed the landscape of this piece of land over time?
Researching and presenting the answers to this Driving Question is another PBL possibility for your seventh grade class. It focuses and motivates their learning related to the Interactions in the Environment science unit, and the details can be found in the Seventh Grade Field Trips At School III post.
- How can we, as citizen scientists:
- Inform the community about the importance of the monarch butterfly?
- Design a monarch habitat that can be used to conduct monarch investigations and increase our local monarch populations?
- Encourage the community to add monarch habitat throughout the neighborhood?
This is a Driving Question suggested by the National Wildlife Federation/National Geographic project called The Monarch Mission. Now with 5,000 participating schools, is the single largest school garden program in North America. Click on the link to find a detailed, ready-to-use PBL resource.
In case you or your students are wondering what the big deal is about monarch butterflies, remember that an effort to attract them is universal design. What's good for the monarch is good for all insects; and after all, insects are "the little things that run the world" (E.O. Wilson)
If you or your school is not thrilled about planting milkweed on the property, alter the goal from attracting monarchs to attracting swallowtail butterflies by planting swallowtail spicebush.
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| NWF/National Geographic |
Understanding Life Systems: Interactions in the Environment
Curriculum expectations are always based on the Ontario Ministry of
Expectations.
Overall Expectations:
- assess the impacts of human activities and technologies on the environment, and evaluate ways of controlling these impacts;
- investigate interactions within the environment, and identify factors that affect the balance between different components of an ecosystem;
- demonstrate an understanding of interactions between and among biotic and abiotic elements in the environment.
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