Vernal pool food web and microscopy

One of my goals for this trimester is to make sure that students know that organisms need energy to live and grow, and that there are different trophic levels in an ecosystem. Since our project is about vernal pools (VP), I had kids create vernal pool food webs. I started by asking them how energy enters this ecosystem. After agreeing that algae and plants are the primary producers in vernal pools, I showed the kids pictures and short videos of other organisms that inhabit these temporary pools. This was necessary since this ecosystem is new to them, and they were not familiar with the species commonly found in vernal pools.

Once we were done looking at VP's organisms, we classified them as herbivores, carnivores, or decomposers. We spent some time discussing how energy moves through a system with all these trophic levels, and then created (as a group) a vernal pool food web. Working as a group in this activity wasn't a good idea. Some kids got really distracted and there were a few conflicts. After the break, we had a writer's workshop with Lorie. Sammy shared his idea for our vernal pool book, and everybody had a chance to make suggestions.

Last week some of the vernal pool cysts hatched - It was so exciting to see fairy shrimp, copepods, seed shrimp and tadpole shrimp swimming in the pools! On Friday, I brought a small microscope that connects to the projector so that we could take a closer look at these crustaceans. After having some fun with this simple microscope, I had a microscope station (with a compound microscope) for the kids to take a closer look at some of the microorganisms that are living in their pools. While one of the kids was with me at the microscope station, the other kids were working on two assignments with Brittany: 1) making their own vernal pool food web - it was important to give them the chance to do this activity on their own since not everybody had a chance to think about each relationship on the previous week; 2) start their field guide flashcards for some of the plants that we might see during our field trips to Jepson prairie.

The kids were really excited to use a compound microscope. I had each kid get a sample of water from one of their experimental pools, and prepare a slide for observation. Before letting them look at their slides, I talked to them about how a microscope works. We were able to see a lot of algae, and some rotifers.