Objectives

Teacher
Information

Student
Information

The Behavior of Ants

Daily Plan

Day 2
  1. Give students handouts explaining what they will be doing over the next few weeks and how they will be graded. Tell students to record everything they do for the activity in their Science journal.
  2. Ask students the following question:
    3.
    • Based upon your observations yesterday, do you think that ants have a preference for what type of material they collect?


Through class discussion, you will:

    • generate several hypotheses as to what the ants may prefer to collect based upon the previous day's observations. You should agree upon a single hypothesis.
    • discuss the making of plans and materials to test their hypothesis.
    • design a method for taking data together and decide how to record quantitative data (i.e. how often ants select specific objects), and descriptive data (other behavioral observations).

Be sure that all three students in each group can participate in the gathering of data when the experimental plan is designed.
Additional resources

 

Day 3
  1. Students will break into their groups of three to complete the experiment designed on Day 2. Be sure that the materials the students will need are available.
  2. Students will test the hypothesis and gather data for the entire hour.
    3.

    Collect your materials and go outside to do the experiment.

Day 4
  1. The class will discuss the data and make graphs together.
  2. Students will attempt to draw conclusions which will then be discussed in class.
    3.
    Additional resources

 

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The University of Arizona
 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics
 General Biology Program for Secondary Teachers
warder@email.arizona.edu

http://biology.arizona.edu/sciconn/lessons2/lessons.html
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