This activity from the outlines how to identify birds around homes in North America.
The activity includes a short informative introduction and questions to help students conduct further research on their findings.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The activity is well laid out and easy to follow, so it is a suitable homework task for all ages.
The activity is open-ended, so it is easy to differentiate for all age groups.
Additional Prerequisites
There is vocabulary included in the activity that could need to be taught before sending the activity home, especially for younger students.
Differentiation
Elementary science and social studies classes can use this activity when discussing the importance of trees in their environment and how they can create community change.
Elementary students could also create a diorama habitat of the birds they spotted and their habitats.
Climate change has endangered bird species, threatened some to migrate, and placed others on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Bird species have gradually reduced in number in North America. This resource also contains bird identifiers to guide students to observe the most common bird species through a birdwatching activity. This is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Science and Engineering
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
5-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
MS-LS2-1 Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.
HS-LS2-7 Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.
LS4: Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity
2-LS4-1 Make observations of plants and animals to compare the diversity of life in different habitats.
3-LS4-2 Use evidence to construct an explanation for how the variations in characteristics among individuals of the same species may provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing.
3-LS4-4 Make a claim about the merit of a solution to a problem caused when the environment changes and the types of plants and animals that live there may change.
