Session 1 · VOICE: Investigate
Field day 2
- 10 minRecheck the plan, the roles and the safety rules. Collect overnight traps and tracking cards first.
- 35 minCollect data at both spots with the same method, same time and same number of repeats. Measure light and temperature at each spot too.
- 5 minPhotograph each sample with a ruler for scale.
Session 2 · VOICE: Create Conclusions
Find the pattern and draw the web
- 15 minTotal the counts. Work out richness (how many kinds) and abundance (how many altogether) at each spot.
- 15 minGraph the results with a title, labelled axes and units. Which spot scored higher, and by how much?
- 20 minBuild a food web from the creatures you actually found: the Sun, producers, consumers and decomposers, with arrows pointing from food to feeder.
Getting started
Start the food web with three cards: a producer, a plant-eater and a hunter.
Stretch
Add a human change (runoff, mowing, trampling, fishing) and trace its effects through two links of your web.
Checkpoint
Each group has a labelled graph and a food web built from its own data.
Activities for this week
- Who visits at night? Tracking tunnels: Which animals, including predators, move through our school at night?
- Light and heat map: How do light and temperature change across our place, and do the creatures follow?
- Pass the energy: Why are there so many plants and so few top predators?
- Runoff in a tray: Does bare ground send more mud into a stream than ground covered with plants?
Useful this week
- Making a tracking tunnel ↗ Build a tunnel and read the footprints of night visitors.
- Stream Health Monitoring and Assessment Kit (SHMAK) ↗ The kit and methods community groups use to check stream health.
- Food webs ↗ How energy moves through producers, consumers and decomposers.