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list of lesson plans

Teacher Information

• Goals & Objectives
• Background info
• Materials List
• Resources
• References
• Vendors

Lesson Plans

• Basic Outline
• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3 - 4
• Day 5
• Day 6 - 8
• Day 9 - 19

Student Information

• Student Grouping
• Studying the Behavior of Ants
• Summary of the Activity
• Ant Information
• Ant Rearing info.

Grades

• Overview
• Journal
• Written Presentation
• Oral Presentation

Grade Sheets

• Poster Presentation
• Oral Presentation
• Journal

Daily Plan

Day 6

Students will go out and take data for the second question (Do ants prefer one type of seed over another?).

Day 7

1. Students will analyze their data and write their conclusions.
   
   
2. The class will discuss the different ways that students chose to analyze their data and compare the various conclusions.

Day 8

Students will spend the period making observations and writing down questions they may want to ask, along with possible hypotheses.

Additional resources for class 8

Make observations as with Day 1. Now that the students have observed ants for several days, they should be able to see a variety of behaviors that they wouldn't have noticed earlier. Instruct them to jot down any interesting questions and hypotheses that they may come up with while making their observations. It is important that students base their questions on behaviors that they have already observed. A student can come up with an interesting question, but the ants may have no interest in performing that behavior! While doing the experiment in such a case, there won't be any data to collect other than saying that nothing happened. For example, a student may want to know if ants will roll over if they hear certain noises. If the student didn't see ants rolling over earlier, the ants probably won't roll over for their experiment. However, if students did notice that during one of the practice experiments the ants started rolling over when someone sneezed, they have a previously observed behavior with which they can alter some variables and observe how the ants respond.

Some questions students may ask are listed. Following each question, a possible experimental method is given.

• How do ants know how to follow each other? Ants make trails by laying down pheromones usually located at the base of their thorax (gastor). Students can crush ant thoraces and dab a trail to see if the ants will follow the student "trail". A gruesome but interesting experiment would be to remove a part of the ants' antennae and see how that affects their ability to follow the trail.
  
  
• What seeds do ants prefer to eat? Students could make small piles of an assortment of seed types, sizes, textures, colors, age, shapes, etc., to see which the ants prefer to visit most often.
  
  
• Why are the ants going into the flower? Students could dissect a number of flowers and put the parts into piles to see which part interests the ant.
  
  
• Do ants go to the bathroom? A number of ants could be collected and put into a homemade ant farm (see handout on ant rearing) where students could observe a number of behaviors.
  
  
• Will ants always fight with ants of different colonies? Students could gather ants of the same species but different colony, and ants of different species, then combine them to see what the ants will do.
  
  
• How much more than their weight can ants pick up? Two possibilities. If the ants are lifting a consistently sized object each time, the students can collect enough ants and a large enough number of the objects the ants are lifting that they can be measured en-masse on the school balance. With that data, do the simple math to figure mass lifted per ant. A possibly simpler solution would be to take their ant and object of interest to a local university science lab or hospital where you could use their balance.