Download curriculum:
Lesson Plan
FOURTH GRADE DAY ONE
Goal: To give students a sense of the many bat species found in the world and provide them with information about the ways in which biologists identify bats.
Objective: Following a series of informational bat species stations, the students will be able to identify five different bat species based on their physical appearance.
Standard: 4.3.2 – Observe, compare and record the physical characteristics of living plants or animals from widely different environments. Describe how each plant or animal is adapted to its environment.
Procedure:
This lesson should be introduced by opening up a discussion on the variation we see in all animals in the world. Begin by discussing the variation we see in animals of the same species, such as dogs. All dogs are members of the same species, but different kinds of dogs look widely dissimilar. Then discuss the variation we see in the same type of animals that are members of different species, such as snakes. There are all kinds of snakes in the world, and each one is a member of a different species. You may find that the distinction between variation among species and between species is a bit beyond your students’ understanding, in which case the lesson is easily modified. Simply discuss variation in a broader context – there are many types of dogs, each with distinct characteristics. There are many types of snakes, each with distinct characteristics.
After discussing variation in physical appearance with your class for approximately five minutes, ask that they spend the next twenty minutes participating in the bat species stations of this lab activity. There are five stations, so allow four minutes per station. Put students in groups of three or four, and position one group at each station. If you have more than twenty students in your class, (maximum of four students per group, one group at each of the five stations) you may choose to duplicate the stations. In other words, there will be two stations for each species, set up in two distinct circuits through which the groups will pass.
At each station, place a few different pictures of bats of the same species. For example, station one will have three or four different pictures, all of a bumblebee bat; station two will have three or four different pictures, all of a Chapin’s bat; etc. Again, if your class count exceeds twenty, you will need to duplicate this entire circuit of three or four images per species per station again in a different area of the room. Be sure that these images are printed in color so that the students may use fur color to identify the bats. Also place a large index card or piece of paper with the name of the bat at each station neatly printed on it. Allow them to take individual notes on their bats for four minutes, discussing the key characteristics of the species with their group. After the four minutes is up, ask students to rotate to the next station. After twenty minutes, students will have individual notes on five different species of bats. They will use that information in the last part of the activity. Following is a list of the species to be found at the stations, as well as the types of notes a student may write down about that species.
- Bumblebee Bat – very small, brown, flat face
- Chapin’s Bat – mohawk-like hair, reddish brown color
- Flying Fox – very large, big eyes, big nose, small ears
- Spotted Bat – black fur, white spots, very large ears
- Honduran White Bat – white fur, yellow nose and ears, pointed nose
Students may write whatever facts they wish on their note sheet, as long as they write the name of the bat above those facts. They should speculate on what type of food each of the bat eat, as well as the ways in which their physical characteristics are adapted to their environment. Large ears, for example, are an adaptation that allows insectivorous bats to better hear their prey. Large eyes help fruit bats locate their food, but do not necessarily need large ears. Remind students that they are being bat biologists today, and that means they must be careful and observant.
In the approximately five minutes that remain, wrap up the lesson by telling students it’s time for a pop quiz! Of course, the answers won’t count for a grade, but simply serve as a reminder to students to observe carefully when it comes to science. Ask students to write the numbers one through five on their paper, and put their answers next to each number as you go along. You may order the questions in any way you choose, but phrase them as if you were the bat. For example, you might say “I am one of the largest bats that exist. I have a large nose and very large eyes, which means that I most likely eat fruit. I look like another furry animal that can be found in the woods. Which bat am I?” The students, then, would have to write “Flying Fox” next to the number that corresponds to that question. Allow students to use their notes, because real biologists use all kinds of information when they are identifying bats they find. Encourage correct spelling and neat writing as they formulate their responses. Wrap up by asking for any questions and collecting the papers. You may choose to assess the students on their writing and neatness, but having the correct answers is not the real goal of this activity.
Materials:
Three or four different color printed photographs of a bumblebee bat
Three or four different color printed photographs of a Chapin’s bat
Three or four different color printed photographs of a flying fox
Three or four different color printed photographs of a spotted bat
Three or four different color printed photographs of a Honduran white bat
** Note: you will need to duplicate the above listed images if two circuits of stations are assembled.
One large index card or piece of paper per station, each with that station’s bat species name printed.
Two pieces of paper per student (one for notes, one for quiz)
FOURTH GRADE DAY TWO
Goal: To help students reach an understanding of the correlation between body structure and function by discussing one of feeding strategies employed by some bats.
Objective: Using a model of a typical flower, students will design and draw the body of a bat that feeds on nectar, then write a paragraph about their bat and how it interacts with the flower.
Standard: 4.3.2 – Observe, compare and record the physical characteristics of living plants or animals from widely different environments. Describe how each plant or animal is adapted to its environment.
Procedure:
This lesson is a continuation on the information learned in lesson one, both in content and the standard covered. In the previous day’s lesson, your students were asked to describe the physical characteristics of bat species of which they had no prior knowledge. They were also asked to speculate on the type of food each of those species consumed, based only on a little information: large ears are an adaptation that allows insectivorous bats to better hear their prey. Large eyes help fruit bats locate their food, but do not necessarily need large ears. This lesson expounds upon those ideas, and promotes student thought on another common type of bat, the nectar bat.
Open this lesson by first asking students what they believe is the most common source of food for bats. Some of them may say blood, thinking of the stereotypic vampire bat, but others might have more accurate responses based on the content of the previous day’s lesson. Although a very small number of species do feed on the blood of other animals, cattle for example, most bats glean nutrition from insects, flower nectar, or fruit. The topic of discussion in this lesson will be nectar bats, or nectarivorous bats, that seek out flowers for food.
If your students do not come up with nectar as a food source on their own, inform them that there are many species of bats that feed on nectar. These bats provide extremely important services for our environment, pollinating a number of species found in their home range. Just as pollen becomes trapped on the outer covering of a bee, it becomes lodged in the fur of a nectar bat. A single bat can pollinate multiple plants on any given evening spent feeding.
After engaging your students in a conversation about nectar bats, inform them that their job today will be to figure out just what a nectar bat looks like. Up to this point in the lesson, you should not have mentioned any physical characteristics of a nectar bat, such as a long snout, large eyes, or small ears. Tell your students that they will need to think hard about what a nectar bat might look like in order to access the pollen deep in a flower. Encourage them to be creative in their assignment, even if their ideas are not accurate with the true anatomy of a nectar bat.
Before beginning the actual assignment, discuss what insectivorous (insect eating) and frugivorous (fruit eating) bats look like. Insectivorous bats usually have very complex looking ears and noses. These structures are used for listening to and emitting the sounds involved in echolocation, respectively. The ears of an insectivorous bat can also be quite large, as seen in species such as the Townsend’s big eared bat. Frugivorous bats usually have much simpler looking noses and ears, which are not used in echolocation. Locating fruit does not require echolocation because fruit, unlike insects, do not move or emit sounds of their own. Fruit bats may also have much larger and well-developed eyes than an insect bat. You should not give away all of these answers to your students right away, but rather get them to think of them on their own by interacting with you in an open conversation.
The first ten minutes of the lesson will likely be used in the discussions described above. In the remaining twenty minutes, students will construct a simple flower and use this model to figure out what a nectar bat would look like. Begin by handing out a 10” x 10” sheet of colored tissue paper to each student, as well as one pipe cleaner. Demonstrate for students how to construct their flower and ask that they put their flowers together at this point in the lesson.
Constructing the flower is quite simple. Lay the tissue paper out flat on a desk or table, and pinch it right in the center with one hand. Using this hand, pull the tissue paper up and off of the desk, and let the un-pinched portion hang freely. With your free hand, form a ring around the top of the tissue paper, right below the hand doing the pinching. Make the ring around the tissue paper by touching your index finger to your thumb. Move your hand down the tissue paper about 3”, then tightly grasp. You may now let go with your first hand, letting the pinched portion stand freely, 3” above the hand forming a ring. With your newly free hand, pick up the pipe cleaner and fasten it loosely around the tissue paper, right below the hand forming a ring. Be sure not to tighten the pipe cleaner too much so that your students are still able to get into the “base” of the flower. Print a copy of the How to Make a Flower worksheet for your own use, if necessary.
Once the flowers have all been constructed, allow students to begin working on their bat diagram. Give them each a copy of the Nectar Bat worksheet, which provides ample space for both drawing and writing. Their task is to use the flower model as they think about what characteristics a nectar bat would need to survive. Encourage them to play with their flowers, manipulating them to see how difficult obtaining the nectar would be. After students begin working on their drawing, quickly pull up the Flower Diagram worksheet on a projector and screen (or prepare an overhead transparency and display it on the overhead projector). Students will use the labels found on the flower diagram to complete their writing assignment.
After students have finished drawing their nectar bat, ask them to write two five sentence paragraphs about their bat and how it interacts with the flower. In other words, how is their bat specifically adapted to consuming nectar, and how are those traits advantageous to a nectar bat. Other non-nectar bat species would likely not posses those traits, which could also be included in the paragraph. Ask them to use three of the words displayed on the Flower Diagram worksheet which is being projected onto a screen for all to see. These three words can be used anywhere in their five sentences, but must be logical in their short paragraph. All of the available options for choice of three words, as well as their definitions, are available on the Flower Diagram worksheet. This requirement simply enhances the type of learning taking place in this lesson, and reaches into content on the names we give different plant parts. Making connections between seemingly discrete topics in science promotes a deeper level of student learning.
Students will have twenty minutes to construct their flower, draw an image of a nectar bat, and write two short paragraphs about that bat. Depending on the level of your class, you may choose to extend this twenty minute time block significantly, prepare the flowers for each student beforehand, or reduce the time spent discussing before the activity. Conclude the lesson by asking for questions and collecting papers. Choose students at random to hold up their bat image and explain their drawing to the class.
Materials:
One 10” x 10” sheet of colored tissue paper per student
One pipe cleaner per student
Optional: one How to Make a Flower worksheet for teacher use
One Nectar Bat worksheet per student
Projector and screen, or overhead projector and transparency (if transparency, copy of
Flower Diagram worksheet)
FOURTH GRADE DAY THREE
Goal: To teach students about the many impacts, both positive and negative, that humans can have on bats.
Objective: Students will participate in a game that demonstrates the change in bat population number that occurs as a result of human activities.
Standard: 4.2.6 – Describe ways in which humans have changed the natural environment. Explain if these changes have been detrimental or beneficial.
Procedure:
Prepare for this lesson by cutting small index cards in half, and labeling each half with one of the following: little brown bat, Indiana bat, tri-colored bat, and the Eastern small-footed bat. You will need between one and six cards per student, depending on how far they go in the game. Each student’s cards, though, should all have the same species written on it. For a class of twenty students, you will have five students for each species. Some of these students will only need one card for the whole game, while others will need six. Make as many cards as you see fit for your class, and keep all of them for the same activity next year!
Little brown bats roost in manmade structures, Indiana bats under the bark of dead trees, tri-colored bats in foliage, and the Eastern small-footed bat in rock crevices. You will need to set up multiple copies of each of these of habitats in your classroom for the purposes of the game. In other words, you will need to model three manmade structures such as a building attic or barn, three dead trees, three living trees, and three rocky areas. Use whatever materials you would like to construct these habitats for your lesson. Living trees could be represented by decorative, artificial ones, for example. The dead trees can be drawn on a large sheet of bulletin board paper, or you could construct one out of limbs and sticks from your own yard. A dollhouse or simply a picture of a barn can be used for the manmade structure, and you can bring in some medium sized rocks to group as the rocky crevice habitat. Space your habitats all around the room, trying to avoid grouping the same habitats side-by-side. Note that each of these habitats is a generalization of these species’ summer homes. Mark the three manmade structures as “Manmade Roost A,” “Manmade Roost B,” and “Manmade Roost C” using a labeled piece of paper taped over the habitats. Do the same for the dead trees, living trees, and rock crevices, replacing the word ‘manmade’ in the above listed labels with the appropriate descriptive words.
The final bit of preparation for this lesson is making one copy of the Human Impacts Game worksheet. Cut the worksheet on the lines provided, and shuffle them together. You will use these cards to decrease or increase the population sizes of the bats at random.
When the lesson begins, randomly pass out one species card to each student. Again, try to evenly distribute these species around your class. You should have approximately equal numbers of each species represented in your class. Ask all of the little brown bat card holders to raise their hands, and count their population numbers. List the original population size for the little brown bat on your chalkboard, whiteboard, or chart paper. Repeat the same process for all four species. This will give your class a starting point to judge whether population numbers have increased, decreased, or remained the same after the game.
Ask students to now scatter themselves among the twelve different habitats in the room at random. Do not provide any information beforehand about the preferred summer roosting site for each species. Draw one instruction card from the deck, and read it out loud. Students should listen carefully, and follow the instructions given. Any students that are eliminated should return to their desks, and any students that stay in the game should shuffle around to a new roost. Continue to not provide any information on the habitat preferences for each species, although your students may quickly figure it out. Draw another instruction card, follow the directions, then shuffle to new roosts. Draw another instruction card, follow the directions, then shuffle to new roosts. Three instruction card draws will occur in each round. At the end of a round, allow the still living bats to reproduce. Provide each student still in the game with another bat card of the same species, so they now have two bat cards with the same bat name listed on them. Begin the second round of the game, drawing three more instruction cards with shuffling and eliminations in between. Provide any students still in the game at that point with a third copy of their bat card, then begin the next round. Go through this process a total of four rounds.
The maximum number of times a student can survive a round is four, meaning the maximum number of new bat cards they can receive is four. Added to the bat card they started with, the maximum number of total bat cards a student can possess is five. Some students, however, will be eliminated at the very start of the game, and will therefore only require one bat card. Another complicating factor in determining the number of bat cards to prepare for you class is the fact that some of the instruction cards actually increase the population numbers due to positive human influence, meaning that some students may need even more than five bat cards. Only one increase in population size can occur per species in the game, making the total count six for the maximum number of bat cards a student would need. Your safest bet would be to prepare too many bat cards for your class before the lesson so that you will not run out in the middle of the game.
The entire game should take approximately twenty five minutes. In the last five minutes of the lesson, conduct another population count in your class. Be sure to only count the students who had not been eliminated at the end of all four rounds. This time, when students raise their hands, they should tell you how many bat cards they have, and you will add them up to determine the new population sizes. Some will increase, others will decrease, and some may remain the same. Because students are being eliminated, but new bats are being born at the end of each round, you may find that all four populations remain fairly stable. In this case, ask students to think about how much bigger their population sizes could have been if less bats were eliminated after each instruction card draw. Conclude the lesson by discussing the four species’ summer roost site preferences, and connecting those preferences to the game that was played. They should begin to realize that some things humans do can negatively impact our environment, while other activities can be positive influences. Wrap up the lesson by asking for questions and summarizing the key topics of the day.
Materials:
Plenty of small index cards, cut in half with one species name written on each half
Materials for habitat construction
3 signs labeled with “Manmade Roost A,” “Manmade Roost B,” and “Manmade Roost C”
3 signs labeled with “Living Tree Roost A,” “Living Tree Roost B,” and “Living Tree Roost C”
3 signs labeled with “Dead Tree Roost A,” “Dead Tree Roost B,” and “Dead Tree Roost C”
3 signs labeled with “Rock Crevice Roost A,” “Rock Crevice Roost B,” and “Rock Crevice Roost C”
Tape
One copy of the Human Impacts Game worksheet, cut on dotted lines
Chalkboard/whiteboard/chart paper
Chalk/dry erase marker/marker
FOURTH GRADE DAY FOUR
Goal: To teach students that bats not only use echolocation, but also their sense of smell in seeking out a meal.
Objective: Students will work in pairs to identify a smell and locate the same smell at stations throughout the room as a means of discovering the important olfactory cues that bats must use.
Standard: 4.3.3 – Design investigations to explore how organisms meet some of their needs by responding to stimuli from their environments.
Procedure:
Assemble 5 stations around the room, each with a similar set up. At each, place a mason jar or plastic container with its lid. In the container should be a few cotton balls that have been dipped in one of the following liquids: 1) clear vanilla flavoring, 2) white vinegar, 3) clear almond flavoring, 4) salt water, and 5) some kind of perfume. Place the lid on each of the containers so the scent does not escape. It might be useful to put two or three of say, scent number 1 on table number 1 so that more students can access the scent jars at one time. The scent number should not be displayed at each station, but the teacher should know which scent is where.
Before class begins, you will also need to prepare individual scent cups for students. Place 5 small paper cups on a sturdy paper plate. Put a number 1 through 5 on the bottom of each cup, so that when it’s sitting on a table the number is hidden. Put the names of two students on each of the cups; they will be working in pairs. Each set of partners will receive the paper plate with all five cups on it. They don’t need to know that there are numbers on the bottom, but it wouldn’t change the experiment if they happened to see it. Each of the five cups has both names of the pair on the front so the teacher can easily see whose cups are whose. In each cup should be 1 cotton ball, dipped in the scent that corresponds to the number on the bottom.
When the lesson begins, pass out the plates with the cups on them to each set of pre-determined partners. Let them work freely, moving about the room in whatever order they choose. Ask them to pick up one scent cup at a time and see if they can match it to the correct jar at each station. For example, John and Joe will pick up one of their small cups, smell the cotton ball, and set it back down away from the rest of the cups so that they don’t get mixed up. Then John and Joe will walk around and smell all of the big containers, pick the right one, and place the small cup they had originally set aside at that station, behind the big container. After leaving their small cup next to the big container they think matches the scent, they repeat the process with the remaining 4 scents. The trick, however, is that each team can only smell the small cups once, while they are at their personal desks. They need to leave the cup there, but set aside, while they walk around trying to remember what they smelled and match it up to the correct big container. After smelling the small cup the first time, they cannot smell it again. When the experiment is complete, a collection of cups will be sitting next to each big container, with their numbers hidden on the bottom. Keeping the numbers hidden prevents pairs of students from mimicking the choices made by classmates. The names of each pair will be on the front of the cup, however, so that the class can know which cup belongs to which team.
After all of the scent selections have been made, ask the students to return to their desks. Walk around the room from one station to the next, and tell them what the scent was. Don’t announce the number yet, though. Pick up each team’s cup, and inform the class that John and Joe picked scent 1 for this container while Amy and Amber picked scent 3! Take a poll of all the answers, and then let the class know which was right. Repeat for all 5 stations.
The goal of this activity is to show students how bats use their sense of smell. About twenty five minutes will be used during the game, and the remaining five will be used on the following activity. After the experiment is complete, a discussion about how bats use scent to locate their families or other bats of the same species. Ask if they thought it was difficult, just using their nose and having to remember what each cotton ball smelled like after walking away from it. Remind them that bats have to remember what their families smell like when they are out flying or looking for a nice place to rest in a cave. Ask students which kinds of bats they think would use their sense of smell the most to find food: ones that eat insects or fruit? (Correct answer: fruit. Bats that hunt insects listen for the insect’s activity while bats that search for fruit don’t have much to listen to. They sniff out their meals!) Discuss what the world olfactory means, and use it in the context of olfactory cues as external stimuli. Bats use these olfactory cues to respond to their environment, just as they use their vision and hearing for the same purpose. This experience is also geared towards introducing students to experimental activities. This particular game is less guided than others, and students get the chance to experiment and test their abilities in smelling, all while learning about a very important sense that bats use every day.
Materials:
One large container (mason jar w/ lid, plastic food container w/ lid) per scent station
Clear vanilla flavoring
White vinegar
Clear almond flavoring
Salt water
Perfume
Cotton balls
Small paper cups, numbered 1 through 5, per group. Also labeled with group members’ names, and in each a cotton ball dipped in scent corresponding to number on bottom.
One sturdy paper plate per group
Download curriculum:
Lesson Plan
ISU Bat Center Learning 