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Lesson Plan
FIRST GRADE DAY ONE
Goal: To discuss some of the important environmental services provided by bats.
Objective: Following a discussion on pollination, seed dispersal, and pest control, students will complete a Bat Impacts worksheet about the influence of bats on other organisms.
Standard: 1.3.5 – Observe and describe ways in which animals and plants depend on one another for survival.
Procedure:
Begin the lesson with a discussion about some of the important ecological and environmental services provided by bats. Using a chalkboard, whiteboard, or chart paper, list some of these connections between bats and other organisms. This discussion will open the unit for the rest of the week and give students a reason why it is important to study bats.
After collecting responses, be sure that the following three connections have been listed: 1) nectar eating bats are pollinators, 2) fruit eating bats are seed dispersers, and 3) insect eating bats help with pest control. If these characteristics have not been listed, prompt students to give such responses. Many students will think that bats only drink blood, but it is important to remind them that almost all bats only eat nectar, fruit, or insects. Use words such as nectarivorous (nectar eating), frugivorous (fruit eating), and insectivorous (insect eating). Compare nectarivorous bats to other such animals, like butterflies and bees. Explain that nectar-eating organisms are important to our environment because they pollinate a variety of plants, helping them spread and grow. Compare frugivorous bats to other such animals, like bears and birds (both examples of part time frugivores). Explain that fruit-eating organisms are important to our environment because they spread seeds in their droppings. They, too, help a variety of plants spread and grow. You may also discuss the importance of fur in seed dispersal. Fur traps many “prickly” seeds that are eventually dropped from the deer, dog, etc. into the soil where they have the opportunity to germinate. Compare insectivorous bats to other such animals, like frogs and moles. Explain that insect-eating bats are important to our environment because they control insect populations and prevent them from reaching extremely high numbers. You may discuss other important pest control animals that do not necessarily eat insects. Cats, for example, control pest populations by eating mice near your house. The definition of “pest” in pest control by cats and bats is different, but both are significant contributors to our environment. Show images of each of the three types of bats, nectarivorous, frugivorous, and insectivorous, on a projector or printed out on paper.
The discussion about the ecological services of bats should take approximately fifteen minutes. The remaining fifteen minutes of the lesson should be used to complete the Bat Impacts worksheet. Be sure to leave the discussion notes up for the class to see, as these facts will be important in completing their work. Students will find a circular diagram on their worksheet, with spaces to both write and draw. The first space has been partially completed for them, stating “Bats eat__________.” It is their job to write in a word for the blank. They may choose to write nectar, fruit, or insects. They may also choose to get creative and write berries instead of fruit or moths instead of insects. After filling in the blank, they should draw a picture that goes with their sentence.
After completing the first space, students will move on to the second one. Using the information from the first space, they will continue on with more information not about bats, but about the items they eat. After writing a second sentence, a corresponding picture will be drawn. This process should be completed for all five spaces. The last space should be about an organism that directly influences bats. Students are encouraged to ask questions, use the discussion notes, and talk with their classmates. Each student will end up with a slightly different cycle, but all will have the same message: bats impact many organisms, which in turn impact bats. Following are some examples of completed Bat Impacts cycles:
- Bats eat berries. -> Berries grow in bushes. -> Bushes are homes for snakes. -> Snakes eat insects. -> Insects feed bats.
- Bats eat insects. -> Insects eat crops. -> Crops feed humans. -> Humans plant flowers. -> Bats pollinate flowers.
- Bats eat nectar. -> Nectar is in a flower. -> Flowers grow on plants. -> Plants feed insects. -> Insects feed bats.
Remind students that they will need to think out what they will write in all the spaces before beginning. They should cycle back to bats in the last space in a logical way. Conclude the lesson by asking some students to read their Bat Impacts cycle to the class, asking for questions, and collecting the papers.
Materials:
Chalkboard/whiteboard/chart paper
Chalk/dry erase markers/markers
One Bat Impacts worksheet per student
Crayons for each student
Projector and screen, or printed out photographs of bats
FIRST GRADE DAY TWO
Goal: To teach students about the wide variety of adaptations bats have for their specific environments.
Objective: Following a discussion on adaptations certain bat species have to their environments,
students will work as a class to group bats based on their physical characteristics.
Standard: 1.3.4 – Describe how animals’ habitats, including plants, meet their needs for food, water, shelter and an environment in which they can live.
1.3.1 – Classify living organisms according to variations in specific physical features (e.g.
body coverings, appendages) and describe how those features may provide an advantage for survival in different conditions.
Procedure:
Open the lesson by asking students to give examples of animal body characteristics that help them survive. For example, hummingbirds have long beaks that allow them to get the nectar deep in a flower, frogs have sticky tongues that allow them to grab insects, and cats have sharp claws that allow them to climb trees in search of prey or to escape danger. List these animals, their characteristics, and the function of these characteristics on a chalkboard, whiteboard, or chart paper.
After discussing a number of different animals and their adaptive traits, begin to discuss bats. Students may have the notion that all bats are the same, believing them to live, eat, and behave in the same ways. Lesson one of this unit, however, should have introduced the idea of variety in bat species in terms of the food they consume. In lesson two, students will analyze the differences between species of bats on a deeper level, and begin to think about how these differences help bats survive in a number of habitats.
Make a new list on the chalkboard, whiteboard, or chart paper. Write the following environments, which constitute the vocabulary words for this lesson: desert, forest, ocean, mountains. Leave space after each to write in the ideas your students have. Open up a discussion with your students, asking for any ideas about traits bats might have to help them live in these environments. Allow for creativity, but students might need some guidance to get the right answers. However, don’t turn away any of their ideas, unless they are obviously at odds with the listed environment. For example, accept a response such as “Desert bats live in the sand,” even if this statement is not technically correct. The idea is that the student is thinking about the environment and how a bat would go about living there. Do not accept a response such as “Desert bats can swim,” because the student is not grasping the idea of traits fitting their environment. Deserts lack water, so desert bats would not need to be able to swim – it would not help them in any way. Kindly steer that student towards a more logical response.
You will likely end up with a wide variety of very creative answers, which is the whole idea! Some correct and concrete examples are as follows:
- Desert: The pallid bat is a good example of a desert bat. It is sandy colored, eats centipedes and scorpions, roosts in rock places, and crawls on the ground a lot. Being able to crawl allows the bat to find insects that are hiding in the soil from the heat and the sun.
- Forest: The Indiana bat is a good example of a forest bat. It is brown and black in color, eats flying insects, and roosts in trees. It captures insects in flight, and occasionally forages for these insects over water.
- Ocean: The flying fox is a good example of an ocean bat. They live in large camps, use vision to navigate, have long noses to find food, and eat fleshy fruit and not bugs. They are usually dark and sometimes have facial markings, which may function in their group communication. Tropical ocean areas have abundant fruit, which is a reason why these bats are frugivorous.
- Mountains: The eastern small-footed bat is a good example of a mountain bat. They are extremely small, dark colored, eat insects, and hibernate in the winter. Their small size is important in finding adequate roost locations – they are able to wedge themselves into tiny rock crevices that are abundant in mountainous areas.
All of these facts do not need to be presented to your students, but will hopefully guide you in selecting the types of information you do choose to share.
After discussing the many adaptations bats have in the listed environments, challenge students to identify what type of habitat a bat lives in based on its physical appearance! Again, the idea is not for students to give correct answers, but to think about what they are saying and draw logical conclusions. Display photographs of ten or twelve bat species for your students on a projector or printed out on paper. If the images have been printed out, be sure they are in color. Show a picture, and ask students to say whether that bat lives in a desert, forest, ocean, or mountain environment and explain why. Accept responses such as “Desert” for a flying fox if the student explains that its large nose is used for sniffing out insects in the sand. There really are no wrong answers here, and the creativity of your students is the idea of the game. Offer a class reward for the most inventive responses, and remember to discuss each answer carefully and analytically. The entire lesson from start to finish should take the entire thirty minutes. That time can be divided up between each of the activities as you see fit, based on the flow of the discussion. Conclude the lesson by asking for questions and requesting a quick, spoken summary of the lesson by a few of the students.
Materials:
Chalkboard/whiteboard/chart paper
Chalk/dry erase marker/marker
Ten to twelve images of various bat species, displayed on projector or printed in color on paper
FIRST GRADE DAY THREE
Goal: To teach students about the basic needs of bats, including food and water, for survival.
Objective: Students will create a chart that demonstrates the basic needs for survival of both bats and more well-known species.
Standard: 1.3.3 – Observe and explain that plants and animals have basic needs for growth and survival: plants need to take in water and need light, animals need to take in water and food and have a way to dispose of waste.
Procedure:
Begin this lesson by asking students if any of them have or have ever had a pet. Assign students into groups of two, making sure to have at least one student in each group with some experience with a pet. If you do not have enough students who have had a pet to accomplish this, ask them to think creatively about the needs of an animal, and what they think they would need to provide to a pet if they had one.
After grouping students into pairs, ask them to write down a list of things the pet needed from their human family. Give them a few minutes to think about the question and really dig deep to list every requirement that their pet had. Some common responses will be food, water, walks, a place to dispose of waste, attention, shots or medicine from the vet, toys, treats, a bed, a collar, etc. Go around the room and ask each group to tell you one thing on their list, but do not let any of the groups repeat what someone else has said. Instruct students to add new items to their list that they originally missed.
After an open discussion of the many requirements our pets need, ask students to read through their list again very carefully. Have them cross out with a colored pencil or crayon any of the items on their list that their pet would not be able to receive if they lived in the wild. This will force students to think about the most basic needs of animals: food, water, and shelter. They may leave items such as taking your pet for a walk on their list, because animals get plenty of exercise in nature! There really are no wrong answers for which items to keep and which to eliminate, as long as the ones kept are logical.
Approximately ten minutes should be spent on all of the activities leading to this point. Instruct students to now create a chart for their information, using paper, pencil, and a ruler. There should be three columns on their charts, and as many rows as the number of items on their list plus one. Each chart, therefore, many look a little different. Now ask students to put the pet requirements down either the second or third column of their chart, starting at the bottom. The last space they reach in that row should be both empty and at the top of the chart. Instruct students to name in that empty space the type of pet they were thinking of while making their list: dog, cat, goldfish, bird, etc.
Drawing the entire chart and filling part of it should take approximately ten more minutes. The last ten minutes of the lesson should be focused on how the list of requirements for a dog, cat, etc. is similar to a list of requirements for a bat. Ask students to think critically about the requirements they thought of, and try to draw a similar example for the requirements of a bat. For example, dog food could be correlated to insects, fruit, nectar, or even blood. A dog house or bed could represent a cave or tree. Walks around the neighborhood might be flying around an area, and so on. Items such as water and sleep will be the same in both columns. Students may choose to alter those requirements, though, for more specificity: water from a bowl and water from a pond, sleep on a bed and sleep under tree bark. Items that are similar should be side by side in their respective columns. Dog house should be directly next to cave, and water from a bowl should be directly next to water from a pond. The bat requirements should be entered into the second or third column, depending on the one that is left open after listing the pet requirements. Having students work in pairs will likely speed the rate at which they draw these connections between pet and bat survival requirements. Encourage them to discuss with their partners and come up with the most creative charts they can think of. The top space on the column of bat requirements should say ‘bat.’
The last part of this assignment shouldn’t take long, and will allow students a chance to think about the way we categorize and classify things in our world. The first column should still be empty on each group’s chart. Instruct your students to write ‘type of need’ in the first space. As a side note, you may choose to refer to ‘requirements’ as ‘needs’ throughout your lesson, or use them interchangeably. If students are not familiar with the word requirement, this lesson serves as a great example of just exactly what it means. After students write ‘type of need’ in the first space, they should fill in the rest of that first column with the types of needs in each row. Because students wrote similar needs side by side, the type of need will the same in each row. Food, water, shelter, and exercise are just some examples of the types of needs that should be used.
Conclude the lesson by collecting the charts and asking your students if they have any questions. This activity not only covers important information as far as the science content, but also gives your students practice in creating and interpreting charts.
Materials:
Two blank pieces of paper for each student (one for forming a list, one for creating a chart)
Pencils
Rulers
FIRST GRADE DAY FOUR
Goal: To highlight the differences in bat tents and bird nests while discussing roosting behaviors of various bats.
Objective: Given an assortment of craft materials, students will construct a representative shelter for birds, bats, or both, and explain the features of their shelter to the class.
Standard: 1.4.3 – Choose two animals that build shelters within their habitats. Compare the shelters in terms of the materials and tools they use and the type and purpose of shelter they provide.
1.4.3 – Construct a simple shelter for an animal with natural and human-made materials.
Procedure:
This lesson can be opened up with a quick discussion about the content from day two. Students learned in lesson two that bats live in a variety of habitats, and that their bodies are adapted to the environments in which they live. In today’s lesson, students will learn more about the types of shelters that bats use while roosting in those environments.
Remind students that bats are nocturnal, meaning that they are active at night and sleep during the day. Roosting is the term that refers to the time bats spend sleeping during the day, and a bat’s roost is where you will find it while the sun is up. Each species of bat has its own preference when it comes to roosting locations, depending on the physical characteristics of the bat and its surrounding landscape. Some bats roost in rocky crevices, while others roost under the peeling bark of a dead tree, also known as a snag. A few bats have an unusual location for roosting – they build tents, similar to the nest of a bird, out of large leaves. An example of such a species is the Honduran white bat, which is unique not only in its roosting strategy but also its bright white pelage.
After discussing the meaning of the word ‘roost’ and how it applies to bats, discuss the need for shelter that all animals have with your class. All organisms need a safe place to call home, and every animal is individual in the way it finds or creates this shelter. Many students will already be familiar with the nest-making activities of birds, and may have even seen some in nearby trees. The major difference between the shelter of bats and birds, however, is the way in which these shelters are made. Most birds collect the materials needed for their nest and construct it themselves. Bats, however, usually find a pre-existing structure and make modifications on it to suit their needs. Bats do not collect materials to form their roosts, but simply find a suitable space between rocks or under tree bark that they call home. Many bats use the same roost day after day, and return to that roost at night to take breaks while hunting. Discuss all of these characteristics of bird and bat shelters with your students, and show them a photograph of Honduran white bats in their leaf tents on a projector or printed out on paper. Make a list of important characteristics of nests and tents on the chalkboard, whiteboard, or chart paper for the class to view. Wrap up the discussion after approximately five minutes, and ask students to begin working on their assignment.
Students will be given a variety of materials to construct their shelter, including popsicle sticks, yarn, glue, tape, construction paper, and other such materials. Ask them to spend the next twenty minutes constructing a shelter for a bird, a bat, or both out of the materials provided. Remind them to follow the lists made during the earlier discussion, and encourage them to make their shelter useful for the animal they choose. For example, a shelter for a bat would typically be less spacious than one constructed for a bird. Bats like to be squeezed into their roost tightly – they find very small spaces between rocks or under dead tree bark to rest. Birds, however, usually have an open bowl-shaped shelter that allows them to get in and out easily during the day. It may be helpful to make the following comparison: humans sleep at night with the lights off, and it is sometimes difficult to fall asleep when there are bright lights in our eyes. If a bat’s shelter was out in the open, it would have a hard time sleeping during the day when the sun was up. They need covered, small spaces where the light is less likely to penetrate to help them get a good day’s sleep!
As the students are working on their shelters, be sure to walk around the room and help them as necessary. Ask what their ideas are about their shelter, and why they are choosing a certain design or materials. In the last five minutes of the lesson, ask the students to quickly present their shelters to the class and explain the unique features of it. They should identify whether the shelter was made for a bat, a bird, or both, and how the structure of their shelter is well-suited to the animal they chose. Conclude the lesson by collecting finished shelters and asking for questions. Hang the shelters around the room after school or send them home with students at the end of the day.
Materials:
Projector and screen, or printed out photograph of Honduran white bat
Various craft materials: popsicle sticks, yarn, glue, tape, chart paper, etc.
Chalkboard/whiteboard/construction paper
Chalk/dry erase marker/marker
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Worksheets
Lesson Plan
ISU Bat Center Learning 