Teachers TryScience

Pill Bug Inquiry Lab

Nov 16 2012

Source: mcgaffin

Summary Information

Keywords:

Scientific Method, Well Designed Investigation

Topic:

Biology

Workplace Skills:

Raising Questions

Planning investigation

Discussion

Recording & Reporting

Teamwork

Independent Thinking

Estimated Time Required:

less than 1 hour

Target Grade (Ages):

Grade 9 (Ages 14-15)

Grade 10 (Ages 15-16)

Grade 11 (Ages 16-17)

Grade 12 (Ages 17-18)

Diversity Indicators:

Biology

Tab Wrapper

LESSON

Goals and Prerequisites

Goals:

Students will design an experiment using the well designed investiagation and collect data.

Students will analyze data and draw a conclusion from their experiments.

Students will create graphs or other visual displays of their data to draw conclusions.

Prerequisites:

Students should be familiar with the well designed investigation model.

Instructional Objective(s)

Students should be able to design an investigation where they keep as many parts constant as possible. They should be able to use their data to draw a conclusion about the environment that pill bugs prefer.

Instructional Resources

Background:

Students should have a little background as to what pill bugs are and where they are found. They should have had lessons in how to set up a well designed investigation and how to graph results.

Materials:

6 Pill bugs/lab group

1 Large Petri dish/lab group

Sharpie (to divide dish into 2 sides)

Sand Paper (for rough texture option)

Black Construction paper (for dark option)

Ice in styrofoam cup (for cold option)

Warm water in styrofoam cup

Tape

Other options as kids come up with them (dirt, sand, gravel...etc)

Wet paper towels (for wet option)

Dry paper towels

pdf of flipchart for pill bug lab

Pill bug lab report template

Student prelab for Pill bug lab

Procedure:

Students will be choosing which two environments they want to test (hot/cold, dry/wet, rough/smooth, etc).

1) They will need to divide their large Petri dish into two sides and label them (Right/hot, Left/cold) or whatever options they choose. Before they change their environments, they will need to have the pill bugs move around the petri dish for 1 min trials and count the number on each side. This will give them a control to compare their data against.

2) They will need to engineer a way to make two environments inside their Petri dish (hot/cold, wet/dry...etc).

3) They will place the Pill bugs in the dish for 1 min trials and count the number on each side.

4) They should record their data in a data chart.

Assessments and Rubrics

The prelab is used to help them to design their experiment. Have them write out procedures before they begin the lab. During the lab, make sure that they are keeping accurate data and that they are keeping as many variables constant as they can throughout each of the trials. They will write up a lab report to explain their set up and make an evaluation of what environment the pill bugs prefer.

Pill bug rubric

External Resources

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUjkRKEqKaE

This gives an example of the set up of the lab.

Credits

Becky McGaffin

(though I didn't come up with this lesson idea- this has been used by teachers in my district for a long time).

RESOURCES

Original Resources

Pedagogical Resources

pdf of flipchart for pill bug lab

pdf of slides used to teach this lesson

Worksheets

Pill bug lab report template

Worksheet for students to write up lab

Pill bug rubric

Rubric for grading pill bug lab. Includes a peer review section

Student prelab for Pill bug lab

Student worksheet for pill bug prelab

Contributed Resources

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STANDARDS/CURRICULUM

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Your Rating:

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Comments

Students are very engaged in

Students are very engaged in this lab. It also teaches them about error as there can be problems with pill bugs rolling up into balls, or just dying! Make sure you keep your pill bugs in a moist (not too moist) environment.

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