Lesson plan

Biodiversity

Summary
Explore the diversity of living things through activities that highlight life's variation and the connections between living things.
Science content
Biology: Features, Adaptations of Living Things (K, 1, 3, 7)
Biology: Classification of Living Things, Biodiversity (1, 3)
Biology: Food Webs, Ecosystems, Biomes (3, 4)
Biology: Evolution, Natural Selection (7)
Materials
  • materials in the activities
  • tree of life (evolutionary tree) poster e.g. this one
Procedure

Use this awesome website: onezoom.org

Activity grouping ideas:

Biodiversity in a Food web and Pond life
Model a food web of the temperate rain forest, and understand why biodiversity makes an ecosystem resilient.
Look together at Tree of Life poster, to find the living things in our forests, and see the array of other living things that live in their own ecosystems.
Pond dipping activity to discover the biodiversity of tiny pond animals that we do not usually notice.

Biodiversity and Biomes
Look at a Biome map, discuss their broad climate differences, including our temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest.
Optional: Sun's angle on earth activity to explain the differences in climate in biomes.
Model a food web of the temperate rain forest.
Camouflage challenge to model how living things in any biome use camouflage to increase their chances of survival.
(Also see Biomes lesson plan for alternate activity ideas on this topic.)

Biodiversity and Life cycles
Look together at Tree of Life poster, and note the diversity of living things, and how they are similar and different from each other.
Food web model including deer, to show how living things depend on each other for their survival.
Build a deer skeleton with discussion on how the deer died, and what ate it after its death.

Biodiversity of animals
Look together at Tree of Life poster, and note the diversity of living things, and how they are similar and different from each other.
Do two of these activities.
Find animals on the poster with bones, then build a deer skeleton, asking students to find the same bones in their body.
Find all the animals on the poster that do not have bones (a lot of them!) then look at an animal without bones: worm observation.
Pond dipping to discover the diversity of tiny pond animals, then find pond water life on the poster e.g. shrimp, floating pond plant.

Biodiversity and survival
Highlight how many living things there are in a tiny square of ground: habitat survey with food web. Extrapolate to the larger world and the enormous amount of biodiversity.
Animals are often coloured like their surroundings to help them hide (whether they are prey or predator). Students can use their same square for the camouflage challenge.

Plant biodiversity: flower colours and plant smell molecules
Flower colour activity to show how flowers use just a few molecules to make all their colours, which attract pollinators.
Plant smells also attract pollinators (and have other uses):
Smell molecule posting game for younger students.
Matching plant smells and discovering their smell molecules for older students.

Notes

The Food Chains lesson has similiar activities, but with a different discussion focus.
Pond dipping and posting game also make up the Classification lesson, but with a different discussion focus.

Grades taught
Gr 2
Gr 3
Gr 4
Gr 5
Gr 6