Students explore the effects of the environment on competition between species. Students play a game where two different species forage for prey. Species differ in vision, simulated by light-filtering goggles, which affects their
ability to forage on particular food items that differ in color. Students gather data, make tables and graphs, and make comparisons between outcomes for different species and in different environments. Students develop new
questions to test within the framework of the game. They make predictions, develop methods, gather data and interpret results from their questions. Connections to evolution, competition, predator-prey dynamics and food webs
can be made.
At the conclusion of the lesson, students will be able to:
- Understand that organisms require resources from their environment.
- Understand that organisms compete for resources in their environment.
- Become familiar with examples of competition between species.
- Understand that changes to the environment change competition between species through a game.
- Become familiar with examples of change in environments that cause change in competition between species.
- Make applications to real world situations of environmental change and competition (including applications to bioenergy plots).
- Make tables and graphs of data collected.
- Interpret data from graphs and make comparisons between graphs from different scenarios and species.
- Develop new questions, make predictions, design methods, test question, collect and interpret data.
Lesson plan and game created by GK-12 Fellow Alycia Lackey & teachers Steve Barry and Sandy Erwin