Amber McCauley teaches bodiversity with Jenga
Every kid has dreamed of a class that is fun.
October 28, 2021
Science teacher Mrs. Amber McCauley is one teacher that makes learning possible. She takes each grade level and figures out a planner to make sure each student in those classes learn the best way possible.
She likes to do labs and make sure everyone gets to be hands on. Just like how in her Environmental Science class she found a new way to teach the kids about Biodiversity.
When you hear Biodiversity you ask yourself, “what does that mean?” Biodiversity is the variety of life in a habitat or ecosystem.
When she first said Biodiversity all of her students had a very confused look on their faces.
She decided to take students outside and take a tally of how many trucks, vans they found in the student and teacher parking lots. She told the students that Biodiversity is the number of species in one ecosystem or habitat.
She told students to count how many “species” there are in the student lot and teacher lot.
When researchers count how many species are in each area, the richer one will have more different species, which was the student lot. The student lot and teacher lot were difficult to tell the difference in evenness because they seemed about the same.
Another way to illustrate the effect of a species in an ecosystem is how when one species in an ecosystem dies the more die and the whole thing collapses.
To illustrate this relationship, the students played a game.
She said, “We are going to play Jenga.”
Each student had to take a piece out. The names on the blocks represented a species that would be disappearing.
She was trying to illustrate that killing one organism affects the entire ecosystem, and then they collapse.
One of the students pulled a block that said “air” and then another student pulled a “water” one. So when they pulled those it really took a toll on the Jenga tower. In real life in an ecosystem if you were to take those very valuable resources away then more resources and organisms will die.
If there are six different species in an ecosystem and frogs and snakes are removed, the ecosystem starts to fall apart. Once you start that tumbling tower of organisms, the harder it is to stop.
