Overview
Key Considerations
Lessons
Learning Outcomes
Students will build understanding around the following themes:
Climate and Changing Ecosystems (Climate change is driving changes here!)
- Changes in Maine’s ecosystems are local instances of global patterns of change.
- Changes in ecosystems have impacts on the species within those ecosystems -- some populations thrive, some move, some decline
Nature of Science (Science is collaborative!)
- There are many different ways to participate in science and being a scientist can involve a broad range of activities, skills and people.
- Investigating changes in ecosystems often is a collaborative effort between professional scientists and members of local communities.
Data and Scientific Inquiry (This is the work that scientists do!)
- Data helps us understand a problem or phenomenon
- Data can be used as evidence to support scientific claims.
- Data can be represented and organized in different ways in order to answer different questions or reveal new information.
- Using data to understand a phenomenon involves being able to read and make sense of data representations (tables, graphs, maps, etc.) and models.
Time Estimate
4 to 10 class periods
Audience
5-8
Learning Space
Classroom
Standards Alignment
In this module, students will learn about pollination and the role of pollinators in producing fruit like wild blueberries. They will explore the range of local bees that are important to wild blueberry pollination, comparing and contrasting bee diet, habitat, and behavior. Through a modeling game, students will learn about how temperatures affect different bees and their ability to pollinate, then they will track how temperatures have been changing in blueberry producing areas. Students will analyze data on changes in wild blueberry production and bee abundance in order to form a claim about whether climate change has been affecting bees or blueberries. Finally, they will synthesize their learning by adapting the modeling game to better reflect their understanding of bees, blueberries and climate change.
This module has students study changes that are driven by climate change. To build students’ understanding of current climate trends, use the two lessons from Preparing for LabVenture: Exploring Global and Regional Climate Trends sequence. Whether or not your students will attend LabVenture, the climate data and background information from these lessons will prepare students for engaging with the local impacts of climate change.
Lesson 1: Busy Plants and Busy Bees
In this lesson, students will learn about how plants make fruit and reproduce by working in small groups to organize stages of plant reproduction. They will watch a short video that emphasizes the importance of bees in plant reproduction and then they will get to know important bee pollinators, what they look like, where they live, and what they do by categorizing different groups of bees.
Learning objectives: Students will be able to…
- Explain why bees are important to plant species like wild blueberries
- Explain why plants are important to bee species
Estimated time: 60 to 90 minutes
Teacher Guide | Student Pages | Class Slides | Blueberry Plant Reproduction Cards | Local Bee Photos and Facts | Local Bee Scientific Groupings
Lesson 2: Ready, Set, Pollinate!
In this lesson, students will deepen their understanding of bees’ role in production of wild blueberries and how their ability to pollinate is affected by the daily weather through an interactive modeling activity.
Learning objectives: Students will be able to…
- Explain why bees are important to plant species like wild blueberries.
- Describe how the weather during wild blueberry pollination can affect both bees and blueberry production
Estimated Time: 45 to 50 minutes
Teacher Guide | Student Pages |Class Slides | Bee cards | Blueberry Cards
Lesson 3: Too Hot to Pollinate?
In this lesson, students will look for long-term trends in temperature during the time period when blueberry pollination occurs. Then, they will take a closer look at day-to-day temperatures within a given season and discuss how changes in temperature might affect pollinators and blueberry production.
Learning objectives: Students will be able to analyze data to identify long term trends and connect what they see in the data to what they know about bees and pollination.
Estimated time: 45 to 60 minutes
Teacher Guide | Student Pages | Class Slides | Temperature Graphs
Lesson 4: Counting Bees and Blueberries
In this lesson, students will move through stations different data visualizations to gather information on changes in bee populations and blueberry production. They will compare what they learned from the data to what they already know about blueberries, bees, and climate change to determine whether and how climate change is affecting bees and blueberries.
Learning objectives: Students will be able to make a claim, supported by evidence, about whether climate change is affecting bee populations and/or wild blueberry production.
Estimated time: 45 to 60 minutes
Teacher Guide | Student Pages | Class Slides | Data Stations
Lesson 5: Developing a model for bees, blueberries, and climate change
In this lesson, students will repeat the “Ready, set, pollinate” activity from Lesson 2 and reflect on how well the activity works like the real world. Then, they will adapt the activity to incorporate what they have learned.
Learning objectives: Students will be able to revise a model so that it better represents current understandings of the connections between bees, blueberries, and climate change.
Estimated Time: 65 to 80 minutes
Teacher Guide | Student Pages | Class Slides | Bee cards | Blueberry Cards