• Report Writing
• My Life As a Black Brant
• Black Brant Poetry
• Other Follow-Up

Subjects: 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 field sheets from the field trip, divide students into 4 teams, one team for each of the field stations: wildlife biologists, marine plant ecologists, geographic interpretation specialists, and the behavioral ecologists. They could be the same groups of students, or a mix of students to bring in new ideas. Maybe find students that took particular interest in that area to establish the groups.

2. Once these have been established, explain to them that they need to compile a short report on the status of their group's particular topic. Specifically, some things to include would be: population surveys, abundance of the eelgrass and sea lettuce, the mapping of the area, the behavior of the brant geese and their relationships to their surroundings, averages for your area on any of the statistics that the sheets asked for, the weather data, a general overview of the disturbances of the area and how they affect the brant, landscape features that affect the brant (shoreline, vegetation, open water channel etc...).

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

Subjects: Science, language arts
Duration: one class period
Group size: entire class
Setting: classroom
Topics: migratory waterfowl, habitat, migration, pressure on brant geese

Objectives:

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

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

Method:

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

Procedure:

1. Have students imagine themselves Black 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 Black 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 Black Brant.

Note for teachers: This activity could also be done as a hands-on art project. Instead of writing about what the world seems like to a Black 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.

Subjects: science, language arts
Duration: one class period
Group Size: entire class
Setting: indoors or outdoors on a nice day
Topics: poetry, creative writing, brant natural history

Objectives:

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 Black Brant, feeding, migrating, or about its habitat. 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 on the internet.

Haiku (pronounced Hi-koo):

This is an unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of 3 lines containing 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively:

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:

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

• Give your students the opportunity to feel creative about the things they have been learning about the Black Brant: paper mache brant nests and eggs for the care package, brant puzzles from photographs, or other artwork.

• Put on a play or a skit about the issues concerning the population of Pacific Black Brant.

• Let students create a Black Brant Display somewhere on your school grounds or at the local town information center to alert tourists of the challenges facing the Black Brant. They can include on it pictures they have drawn, or photographs, poetry, pieces of eelgrass, or even do a mural depicting what the Black Brant sees from above.

• Have the students write letters to local, state, or federal agencies and land managers (planning and zoning commissions) to receive information about laws governing local brant habitat.

• Using the information from the report writing activity, find out what students can do locally. Conduct interviews with locals that rely on the brant habitat: hunters, fisherpeople, hotel owners along the water. Have students do an actual survey on the level of community interest about the Black Brant. Send some of this information along with letters that they have written to the agencies listed above.

• Don't forget to write letters of appreciation to everyone that was involved in your project: parents, wildlife biologists, bus drivers.