Sixth grade Life Science expectations focus on biodiversity, on interactions among species as well as adaptation and reproduction. Great opportunities to make use of the naturalized area right at school!
As they learn the Life Systems learning goals for this year, sixth grade students can work together with fourth grade students to start a record of the naturalized part of the school grounds, and keep up those records over the years as that area changes.
Understanding Life Systems: Biodiversity
As they learn the Life Systems learning goals for this year, sixth grade students can work together with fourth grade students to start a record of the naturalized part of the school grounds, and keep up those records over the years as that area changes.
Understanding Life Systems: Biodiversity
Curriculum expectations are always based on the Ontario Ministry of
Expectations. Many of the activities will reinforce, rather than teach,
those expectations. As such, no assessment ideas or rubrics are
included.
Overall Expectations:
- assess human impacts on biodiversity, and identify ways of preserving biodiversity;
- investigate the characteristics of living things, and classify diverse organisms according to specific characteristics;
- demonstrate an understanding of biodiversity, its contributions to the stability of natural systems, and its benefits to humans.
Square Meter Study*
The fourth graders do a ‘square meter garden’ inventory study in the school’s naturalized area, and ID all the plants, insects, fungi, soil types, and record them every year, so that they can start comparing how the square meter habitats have changed over the years (see Fourth Grade Science Field Trips at School). They will share with the sixth graders how the naturalized area habitat has changed, so that the sixth graders can explore and research why those changes took place. They, in turn, will share that with the fourth graders, using what they have learned about biodiversity and the stability of natural systems.
Join with fourth graders also to start a schoolyard habitat calendar.
On it, record what-happens-when in your schoolyard. This is called phenology: the study of recurring life cycle events influenced by seasonal changes. After a year of
collecting data, you can custom-design a calendar to highlight the
natural events in your very own schoolyard. Your calendar could include:
average temperature, bloom dates of flowers such as Johnny jump-ups, expected date of returning birds and insects. Or you and sixth grade can contribute to a whole network of people in
North America who collect phenology data at Budburst from the
Chicago Botanical Gardens. The sky is the limit!
Corridors
Sixth grade students can also go for a walk into the neighborhood, and observe the school yard as part of the school's neighboring properties. Remind students of the idea of corridors to which they may have been introduced in third grade: A habitat corridor, wildlife corridor or green corridor is an area of habitat that connect wildlife populations separated by human development or structures. In what ways can neighborhood habitats be better connected with corridors?
Sixth graders can prepare presentations to seventh grade about how the schoolyard can be
part of a greater habitat corridor or wildlife corridor in the
neighborhood.
Sixth graders can also share the information that
they learn about storm runoff (see below). That will help seventh grade in their design of the schoolyard as a healthy habitat for both people and other creatures (see Seventh Grade Science Field Trips at School).
Rain Garden
One year, sixth grade students can collaborate with seventh graders to design a rain garden for the school property as part of its naturalized area. How? Well, that's what you will ask your students, and you will work together to answer the question using these resources.
Then they could plant native moisture-loving plants (not pond plants, though) in the rain garden in the spring. This garden will attract amphibians and more species of insects and birds.
In years after that, students can do a square meter inventory of the rain garden in addition to the above-mentioned naturalized area, so that they study and compare two different ecosystems.
Understanding Matter and Energy: Electricity and Electrical Devices
Overall Expecations:
- evaluate the impact of the use of electricity on both the way we live and the environment;
- investigate the characteristics of static and current electricity, and construct simple circuits;
- demonstrate an understanding of the principles of electrical energy and its transformation into and from other forms of energy.
The teacher will need to get a number of supplies together, but the supplies can be dismantled and reused for years to come.
For more ready-made science lessons for outside, with worksheets, click here.
*lesson from Teaching in the Outdoors, Fifth ed. Donald Hammerman, William M Hammerman, Elizabeth L. Hammerman
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