Archive: Around Town

This is Biomes Night season.  Each of Lansing's five 4th grade classes are celebrating the Biomes Night in which they present their research to teachers and parents, and celebrate their achievement with a special snack representing each of the six biomes they studied.


"A biome is similar to an ecosystem," explains elementary school science teacher Sue Henne.  "It is all the organisms and living and non-living things that constitute a living area that are broken down by some of the characteristics of land, climate, and types of animals that are adapted to those things."  The 4th graders studied biomes over the course of the school year with different approaches and teachers as the year progressed.


Students presented PowerPoint presentations about the biomes they studied.  They broke up into teams that studied one of six specific ones including the tropical rainforest, tundra, marine, dessert, grassland, and deciduous forest .  Each team presented information on their biome, taking turns speaking.  The presentations gave information on the land, climate, plants, herbivores, carnivores, food chains and interesting facts about a biome.  A seventh presentation was made by enrichment students who had studied the effect of oil spills on the environment.

Some Fun Biome Facts Rainforests get between 6 and 30 feet of rain per year The tundra includes mountains, ice flows, permafrost Grasslands have bison, warthogs, zebra, all herbivores.  Carnivores include lions and the black footed ferret.

Along the back wall collages based on biomes were displayed, and a special snack was served after the presentations.  The students got to pick a snack that represented the biome they studied.  Fireballs represented the dessert, blue cool aid and fresh pineapple captured the color of the rainforest, popsicles portrayed the cold tundra, and gummy fruit the marine biome.  Mrs. Henne's buffalo chili, representing the grasslands, produced the biggest stir with parents and students alike enjoying samples.


The evening is the culmination of work done with Henne, art teacher Jessica Stratton, library media specialist Cynthia "Sam" Foley and enrichment teacher Patty Jennings.  Students began with a six week course in Henne's class, learning about the ecosystems, what is contained within them and how the elements interrelate.  It was an exercise in researching as well, using the Internet to find facts.  The classes used the Missouri Botanical Gardens web site which has a section devoted to biomes of the world.

Next they worked with Stratton, creating collages made of colored tissue paper.  "Their biome became a landscape," Sratton explains.  "The challenge was that they couldn't use scissors.  They had to rip everything.  They had to know what was in their biome.  It was just tissue, fingers and glue."  Finally they worked with Foley to create the PowerPoint presentations.


Jennings' enrichment class took their research to a new level, researching how human interaction can help and hurt biomes.  They were told to imagine they work for a company called COPco, a research firm challenged to research which U.S. ports are best suited to handle a disaster like the Exxon Valdiz oil spill.  First they studied that disaster, noting which species were able to survive the spill, and which were most harmed by it.  Then they studied ports with an eye toward finding the ones that would suffer the least impact if the worst were to happen again.  The final part of the project will be to send an e-mail to Exxon, outlining their findings.


Henne is excited about the opportunity the project presented to work with colleagues in different disciplines.  "It's been a great opportunity to work with our colleagues," she says.  "It was fun just using all of us and finding a common way we could get together and to really enjoy that continuity."  She says that it was a great way to teach a topic, because students retained what they learned and continued to reinforce it an apply it in another area.  "Each person said, 'they know their food chains, they really know what they're looking for.' "

The students had a good time, enjoying giving their presentations, and especially the snacks.  The event was a great way to celebrate their accomplishments and to show their parents what they have been studying.  Henne says this was the First Annual Biome Night, implying there will be more in the years to come.

----
v2i13