Activity 4-1. What's a Community?

What's the Point?

After the discussion, students decorate the classroom to depict three different forest communities (dominated by ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine, and whitebark pine) and some of their inhabitants.

Teacher's Map: Grade level(s): Primary, Elementary Objective(s): Students can list members of human and biological communities, and describe energy relationships in these communities. Subject(s): Science, Reading, Speaking and Listening, Library Media Duration: 30 minutes

Links to Standards: National Science Teachers' Association–Grades K–4: C1) Identify needs of various organisms D3) Understand that the sun provides light and heat to earth National Science Teachers' Association–Grades 5–8: B3) Understand that energy is transferred in many ways C4) Recognize that ability to obtain and use resources, grow, reproduce… are essential for life North American Association for Environmental Education–Grades K–4: 0A) Identify basic kinds of habitat and plants and animals living there 0B) Produce images of the area at the beginning of European settlement 1C) Collect information about environment 2.1A) Identify changes in physical environment 2.2A) Understand similarities and differences among variety of organisms, habitat concept 2.2C) Understand basic ways organisms are related to environment and other organisms 2.2D) Know that living things need energy to live and grow 2.3A) Understand that people act individually and in groups 2.3E) Recognize that change is a normal part of individual and societal life… North American Association for Environmental Education–Grades 5–8: 0A) Classify local ecosystems. Create food webs 2.2A) Understand biotic communities and adaptations 2.2D) Understand how energy and matter flow in environment

Vocabulary:

animal, community, ecologist, ecosystems, energy, plant, species

Materials:

In this trunk…	…where?	You must supply
Feltboard Backgrounds (3)	Teacher Box	Space in classroom to display feltboards
Feltboard Notebooks (3)	Teacher Box	Tacks or tape to hang up feltboard backgrounds
FireWorks Library	Main Trunk	Art materials

Preparation:

From the Feltboard Kits, remove the background displays. Pin or tack them up in your classroom, preferably where they can be on display while you use FireWorks. The three forest types that you will study occur at progressively higher elevations. Ponderosa pine is at the lowest elevation, along valley bottoms and on warm lower slopes. Whitebark pine occurs on ridges and near mountain tops. Lodgepole pine grows in the middle but overlaps with both of the other species. Try to depict that in your displays by locating the three beltboards next to each other, with lodgepole slightly higher than ponderosa and whitebark even higher. Another way to do it would be to have a student volunteer sketch a mountain slope and label the drawing to show where the different kinds of forest occur.

Plan student work teams and assignments. Three teams (2 or more students each) will assemble the feltboards. If you wish to display some of the books in the FireWorks Library in your classroom and have students borrow them while you are using the curriculum, ask another team to "assemble" the Library. If this leaves some students without tasks, assign them to examine one book from the FireWorks Library and prepare a poster for the classroom depicting something they learn in it.

Procedure:

1. Give each feltboard team a kit and show them which background to work on. Ask them to assemble the feltboards to look like the photo in each kit. Ask them to label each feltboard with the laminated sign in the looseleaf notebook and to find out, by reading or by asking someone who can read, what the name of the forest is and where it occurs (high in the mountains, near valley bottoms, or in between).
2. Ask the Library team, if you are using one, to arrange the FireWorks Library books.
3. If some students are making posters, arrange for them to borrow books from the Library.
4. Assign some seat work for teams who finish while others are still working.
5. When the classroom is decorated, ask students to be seated for discussion.

Guided Discussion–What is a Community?

6. For Primary Students, hold this discussion as a "circle time" or "storytelling time."

For Elementary Students, record information from students in a chart on the board or on a flipchart: Make three columns – "Community," "Human Community," and "Forest Community." During the discussion, fill in this chart with concepts like those shown in table 9.
7. Ask if anyone can explain what a community of people is. You could ask a student to find a definition in the dictionary.
8. Ask for descriptions and examples of human communities. Write community-related concepts, such as inhabitants, place, birth, having babies, obtain energy, change, in the left column of the blackboard chart. Write students' examples from human communities in the middle column.
9. Ask what a forest community might be. As the discussion develops, write examples in the right column.
10. Explain that the study of living things and their environment is the work of ecologists.

Evaluation:

Name one plant and one animal that lives in a forest community. Where does each of them get energy for life?

Closure:

Ask each feltboard team to tell the class what kind of forest is shown and where it occurs.
For Elementary Students: Point out that forests are much more complicated than the feltboards show. Moist places, for instance (in creek beds and on north slopes), have different kinds of trees and wildlife. Examine and discuss the moist sites shown on the feltboards.

Table 9. Similarities between human communities and forest communities. Use for guided discussion in Activity 4–1.
Community	Human Community	Forest Community
Where? a particular place –– almost any size and shape	city, town, school, church, club family, class	mountainside, valley, meadow huge wilderness
Who lives there?	people	hundreds of kinds of plants, animals, fungi, and other organisms
	They get into the community through birth and moving in; they leave it by dying or moving out.
All need energy. How do they live?	They have to have food. Most adults grow their own food or work for food. Human communities also use fossil fuels, water, wind, and sunlight for energy.	Plants use sunlight energy directly. Animals obtain energy from plants or by eating other animals. Hundreds of species, including many fungi, decompose ("recycle") dead material so its nutrients can be used again.
Change	Human communities change constantly–people are born, grow up, and die. Buildings are built and torn down. Roads and businesses change. Storms, fires, and floods change the community.	Forests too change constantly. Plants grow and die, animals come and go. Storms, floods, and fires cause some dramatic changes. Other changes are so slow that it is hard for humans to notice them.