2015 Winter Teacher’s Workshop – Magnificient Macroinvertebrates

At the 2015 Winter Teacher’s Workshop, elementary teachers continued to focus on ecology. Teachers were fortunate to work with researcher and professor in the department of integrative biology, Mark Novak.  A seven lesson unit focused around streams and macroinvertebrates was shared during this session.  Novak provided an overview presentation that can help with understanding the concepts included in these lessons.

Build-a-Bug allows students work in pairs to create macroinvertebrates with adaptations that would allow them to survive in a habitat. This supplemental PowerPoint gives students the necessary background information for this lesson plan.

Home, Home, in a Stream is an activity in which students create mock streams containing the same habitats that they built their bugs for.

In the activity Macro Feeding Frenzie (along with this PowerPoint) students use various tools to collect a variety of ‘food’, which models the different feeding styles and the accompanying adaptations.

Macro Mayhem allows students to play an exciting game to help them understand how pollution impacts the biodiversity of macroinvertebrates found in a stream ecosystem.

In Biodiversity in a Leaf Pack, students create micro-habitats that will attract macroinvertebrates and place them local streams to collect organisms.

With the activity Analyzing a Leaf Pack, students collect leaf packs and analyze their findings.

Hungry, Hungry Macros allows students to use the macros collected from leaf packs and perform an experiment to determine whether shredders or grazers will eat more leaf material.