Adopt-An-Insect and Pay-It-Forward

This is considered an Expeditionary or Project Based Learning Unit. This means that the students complete many small steps and activities in order to complete a larger project goal. The overall project goal is for each group of students to create a comprehensive multimedia presentation and share that with local elementary students at the end of the school year.

Objectives: After students have completed this project they will be able to:
1) Describe the taxonomy of organisms and insects.
2) Explain the complexities of an ecological food web
3) Describe how adaptations are essential to insect survival
4) Model 'best practices' for how to skillfully student their environment and insects.
5) Explain to elementary students what they have discovered and learned about ecological systems.

Introduction to the project:

A. [Inquiry] Students will be introduced to the project by being asked to simply observe a 'desert' landscape that is outside their school building.
1. Students will examine and brainstorm about different organisms they find and how they might be interacting.

B. Development
1. Students will take part in labs that examine specific insect such as isopods (rollie-pollies), meal worms, madagascar hissing cockroachs, etc.
2. Students will use their growing knowledge to make them more skilled at observing the organisms they encounter.
3. Students will compose a small insect collection.
4. Students will then choose a specific local organism to conduct more research on.

C. Production
1. Students will put together a multimedia production (including a website) where they will display what they have learned.
2. Students will also be asked to create a 'larger than life' scale model of their organism.

D. Community Outreach
1. The final stage will be for students to take their models and presentations to a local elementary school and share with the students there.