Chapter 9: Follow-Up Activities

Through creative and thought-provoking activities, students will have an opportunity to take what they have learned about Brant and apply that to classroom and community projects.

Report Writing: Back In The Classroom

Subject:
Science, language arts
Duration:
at least one class period
Group size:
entire class, small groups, or individuals
Setting:
at home and at school
Topics:
researching special topics, writing, local Brant status and natural history

Objectives:
Students will be able to research and report on their findings of the Brant in their local area and share the information on the Brant homepage.

Method:
Students compile group field data into a class report that can be communicated to the other project sites over the internet.

Background:
Students should now have a good understanding of what problems the Brant in their area are facing. The field trip has provided them with first hand experience allowing them to actually see where the Brant are, and some of the challenges that they are facing.

Procedure:
1. Using the "focus activity" sheets from the field trip, divide students into 3 teams, 1 teams for each of the activities: marine plant/algae ecologists, geographic interpretation specialists, and the behavioral ecologists.

2. Once these groups have been established, pass out their already-filled in sheets (unless they are in their journal) and explain to them that they need to compile a short outline on the status of their group’s particular topic. Let them discuss and combine things that they feel are the most important aspects of their topic. Have the students form sentences from the sheets; example: Take the question, "How might the tide affect the Brant?", and turn it into, "The tide in our area affects the Brant by exposing more of their food source during a low tide."

3. Have students include reasons why they think things are the way they are in their area..... over hunting, disturbance in eelgrass beds, human impact, other reasons, and include that in their segment of the report. Finally, as a specialist in that particular field, let them make some "scientific recommendations" about their particular topic in relation to protecting the brant populations.

Telecommunications:
This information can then be transmitted on the internet to the other sites and onto the homepage.

Graphing Brant Data

Objectives:
Students will learn how to graphically depict the data that was collected during the season from the different sites.

Method:
With a computer graphing program such as ‘Excel’, or, by hand, students will produce color graphs to show the fluctuations in brant populations over time.

Procedure:
1. Put students into groups of 2 or 3.

2. Make 1 copy of the data tables from the web site’s observation log for each group (this year’s and last year’s – depending on the types of graphs you want).

3. Assign each group a different site to compare. Examples:

      Group 1: compares monthly populations of Coos Bay with that of Padilla Bay

      Group 2: compares ’96 – ’97 with ’97 – ’98 Mexico populations

4. Let the students group the data by months, year, place

      Example: Group 1 will add all of the Brant seen in January in Coos Bay from the handout, (and will get totals for each month). The same will be done for Padilla Bay.

5. Next, let students draw conclusions from this: which area saw the greatest number of Brant in February, etc.

6. If computers are available with a graphing program, let students, one group at a time, work with an adult that is familiar with the program, to properly enter the data in the columns similar to this:

Coos Bay

Padilla Bay

November

38

0

December

0

554

January

156

1876

February

891

3304

March

400

2500

The computer program will then let you choose how you want to graph it.

7. If a computer with graphing capability is not available, give students graph paper and have them draw very simple bar charts to depict the information. Let each group explain to the class what their chart represents.

Telecommunications: Attach the graph (as a separate file) to an e-mail message and send it to the listserve for everyone to see!

A Day (or week or year) In My Life As A Brant:

Subject:
science, language arts
Duration:
one class period
Group size:
entire class
Setting:
classroom
Topics:
migratory waterfoul, habitat, migration, preasure on Brant geese

Objectives:
1. Students will experience a creative way to express what they have learned about the Brant.

2. Students will recognize the life processes of the Brant as well as some of the problems affecting them during their migration and stopovers.

Method:
Students will imagine themselves as a Brant and use creative writing to express these ideas on paper to share with others.

Procedure:
1. Have students imagine themselves Brant, and then write a story telling where they have traveled, what they have eaten, the dangers they have encountered, and their perceptions of the world as seen when in flight.

2. The story should be based on factual information. Students can use information provided from this curriculum, from local wildlife biologists, and from resources at local libraries.

3. Encourage students to use information gathered during the field trip. Ask students to write from the perspective of the Brant included using senses as part of the experience, so they write about the temperature, sights, smells, sounds, feeling of flight, textures of habitat (i.e. eelgrass, water) and light levels that they would experience if they were a Brant.

Telecommunications: Send some student stories to the list serve for the web page.

Journal: This would be an excellent activity for the student journals.

Extension: This activity could also be done as a hands-on art project. Instead of writing about what the world seems like to a Brant, have them draw or paint an interpretation of these ideas. Encourage the students to accurately portray the habitat the bird might pass over but use their imagination so that their picture conveys the length of the journey, the altitude the bird flies at, and the feel of the air.

Adapted from: "Alaskan Wildlife Week," published by Alaska Department of Fish and Game. 1983, 1984.

Brant Poetry

Objectives:
1. Students will be able to apply recently learned scientific knowledge in a creative way.

Procedure:
"A poem is a word picture." Discuss this concept with students. Then ask them to write a poem about Brant, feeding, migrating, or about its habitat. Students can write poems year-round in their journals. Or, you may want to put the poems written by the students in a display, compile them into a class book, or ask your local newspaper to publish the best ones in a future edition. You could also send the favorites to the listserve.

Haiku (pronounced Hi-koo):
This is an unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of 3 lines containing 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively:

Pacific Brant
What a spectacular flight
Migrating over seas

Cinquain (pronounced sin-kwane):
A five line poem. The first line consists of 1 word, the second 2 words, and so on until the 5th line which contains 5 words:

Geese
Brant
Creatures that migrate
From north to south
From cold seas to warm

Limerick:
This is a light, humorous poem consisting of 5 lines of verse. Lines 1, 2, and 5 consist of roughly 3 metrical feet, while lines 3 and 4 contain 2 metrical feet. (A metrical foot consists of 2 short, not accented syllables followed by 1 long, accented, syllable.) Lines 1, 2, and 5 rhyme with each other, and lines 3 and 4 rhyme together.

There once was a Brant,
which everyone thought, on the loose,
He flew north to south,
without ever a doubt,
That he definitely was not a moose!

Adapted from: Shorebirds of the Pacific Flyway. U.S.F.W.S., Homer, Alaska.

Other Follow-up Activity Ideas: