In 2020, just as COVID-19 reached Australian shores, a group of enthusiastic teachers had been anticipating their imminent Bush Blitz TeachLive expedition to Rungulla National Park to take part in Australia's largest biodiversity survey. It took two years for their trip to eventuate, but it was worth the wait. Three candidates from the deferred…

The sunflower head moth is considered the most damaging pest to sunflowers in Kansas. This small cigar shaped moth can severely impact the yield of commercial sunflowers. A sunflower plant infested with sunflower head moth larvae can also become very susceptible to Rhizopus fungi which causes head rot and can significantly add to the economical…

Despite the importance of bees, there is a gap in the public's understanding of them. To help address this gap, we developed the outreach tool Experience Bees, a series of simple learning and hands-on activities to teach community members about bees and their importance in our landscapes. Program evaluation showed that participants learned about…

A lesson that focuses on the intricate co-evolution of flowers with their pollinators is one way to help students learn the delicate balance in nature and help ensure that our actions do not upset this balance. In this lesson students use the engineering design process to engineer a flower that is a perfect model for its chosen pollinator. Next,…

Because honeybees are so crucial to the ecosystems in which they exist, educating younger children on the usefulness and relative harmlessness of honeybees may be key to ensuring their survival among future generations. Described here is a unit that addresses the critical role of the honeybee in pollinating flowers using the 5E learning cycle…

Most plants are able to obtain all of the nutrients that they need from air, water, and soil; however, this is not true of carnivorous plants. Because they tend to live in boggy soils where there are small amounts of nitrogen, carnivorous plants have developed specialized structures that enable them to lure and capture insects and sometimes other…

The "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) call for all students to be engaged in investigations that require them to use skills and knowledge related to the science and engineering practices. In this article the authors describe how the mnemonic RAD, "Record-Analyze-Develop an explanation," was used by a…

Urban students often have limited access to field sites for ecological studies. Ubiquitous ants and their mounds can be used to study and test ecology-based questions. We describe how soil collected from ant mounds can be used to investigate how biotic factors (ants) can affect abiotic factors in the soil that can, in turn, influence plant growth.

The authors have developed a lesson to investigate basic principles of ecology, more specifically niche partitioning, while using a jigsaw activity that explores galling insects' interactions with goldenrods. Not only does this lesson capture secondary students' interest and keeps them engaged in hands-on activities, the content addresses two…

Honeybees, butterflies, and ladybugs all have fascinating mutually beneficial relationships with plants and play important ecosystem roles. Children also love these creatures. But how do we teach children about these symbiotic interactions and help them appreciate their vital roles in our environment? One must is to give children direct experience…

For curriculum content-related reasons, inquiry activities can be difficult in classrooms unless the activities are approached in a manner that makes variations among student group findings understandable in the context of the study. Studies of individual animals and plant reactions to stimuli, such as insect exploratory behavior, allow the…

"Community," "assemblage," "network," "complex," "interdependent," "web," and "synergism"--definitions of an ecosystem often include these words to highlight the dynamic interrelated workings of plants and animals with their physical environment. Young children don't understand the complexities of ecosystems, but they can begin to understand that…

Photography makes an easy and excellent tool for teaching field biology courses, allowing students to study nature without harming it. This photographic technique is used in capturing images of vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants during class field trips, then making these images available for students to identify and study from a departmental…

Students can use seed characteristics to discriminate between the different kinds of legumes using taxonomic classification processes of sorting and ranking, followed by construction of taxonomic keys. The application of the Learning Cycle process to taxonomic principles, hierarchical classification, and construction of keys presents the…

Thematic topics offer tremendous potential for science learning in the early grades and beyond. One second-grade class explored honeybees, a subject their teacher found both fascinating and easy to connect to a number of learning standards and science concepts. Her unit, "Honeybees and Apple Trees: A Close Look at Nature's Balancing Act," explored…