CATALPA BIODIVERSITY PROJECT

by Brenda Hunt
8th grade biology teacher
Habersham County

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The Catalpa Biodiversity Project is an effort to give teachers, students and park naturalists a way to experience the biodiversity present in nature by using hands-on activities to study the relationships between the Catalpa tree, the Catalpa Sphinx moth at various stages of its life cycle and the parasites that feed on the moth. There are a wide range of reasons for taking advantage of this opportunity when teaching science to children of all ages. One compelling reason is to make an effort to bring the science curriculum in schools closer to achieving the goals of The American Association for the Advancement of Science's "Benchmarks for Science Literacy for All Americans" and the National Research Council's "National Science Education Standards". School systems should keep this in mind while adopting new science texts and are looking for activities to supplement these texts to enable them to address the national objectives as well as the Georgia QCC (Quality Core Curriculum) objectives which are used in the state of Georgia as a guideline for teachers in developing their curriculums.

It is hoped the project and the accompanying activities will grow to encompass primary, elementary, middle and secondary grades. Due to the numerous parasitoids and hyperparasitoids, there are plenty of opportunities for advanced investigations at the secondary level into biodiversity and entomology. The project will begin first with the primary and elementary levels with a series of simple activities and investigations that give students and teachers an opportunity to achieve some of the national science goals.

It is hoped that the Catalpa Biodiversity Project will introduce these activities to teachers in their educational programs. Afterwards, teachers will be able to continue these on their own by growing their own Catalpa trees and rearing Catalpa Sphinx moths and caterpillars for observations in their own schools.

The first step in conducting these activities is to find out what the students and the teacher know about caterpillars in general. And more importantly, how they feel about working with them since they will need to handle them and observe them closely at times for some activities. Students and teachers must be able to overcome their fear of insects or creepy crawly things before they accept and enjoy working with them. Many of these fears are based on unenjoyable previous experiences or a total lack of experience and fear of the unknown; especially for young children. As has been demonstrated by Koballa and Matthews at the University of Georgia in Athens, with recent activities with the"WOW BUGS"Project , students and teachers came into the project with a variety of background, experiences and feelings toward working with insects. They found that a pre-lesson drawing of a wasp and a post-lesson drawing revealed not only content knowledge before and after the project but served as an attitudinal measure. Teachers can use this information to address student"s initial apprehensions and hopefully, help them become comfortable working with the insects. It is an excellent way to assess knowledge levels and attitude in younger students still learning to write, as well as, students that have difficulty with reading and writing or the English language. Therefore, the first lesson plans include a pre-lesson drawing, then discussion to allow students to express their concerns. Teachers or students will want to make a video or take pictures through out the project to allow for students to reflect on what they have learned and to stimulate discussion, drawings or writings to increase communication skills and allow for assessment.

There are five areas covered in the Catalpa Biodiversity Project with lesson plans developed which can be modified for various grade levels.

I. Observations of a Catalpa tree:

II. Observations of the Catalpa Sphinx Moth Caterpillar:

III. Observations of a Parasite:

III. Observations of the Catalpa Sphinx Moth Life Cycle:

IV. Observations of the Catalpa Sphinx Moth:

The following is a list of those goals of the framework covered by the curriculum of the project and do not represent all of the goals in each category. Information taken from the Georgia Framework for Leaning Mathematics and Science. The codes or numbers below were developed to allow coding for the activities.


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