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SIMply Prairie Quadrat StudyHints from Fermilab Docents |
Hints - Prairie Expert Notes - Educator NotesPre-Visit:
- Teachers should visit the prairie to get the lay of the land and evaluate plantlife.
- Instructional Ideas:
- Give a brief history, stressing need to protect prairie plants by restoration. Explain and demonstrate what a quadrat is and why they are useful.
- Two activities that build skills and can be done before the prairie visit: Estimating Percentages and Quadrat Study: School Lawn.
- Assign each student a prairie plant (that the teacher has observed on site) to research and be able to identify. Have good field guides, photos, drawings and even dried plants, etc. available for students to use.
- Have students look over prairie and non-native data sheets.
On-Site Quadrat Study:
- Allow 1-1 1/2 hours for this activity. More time may be needed if the teacher does no pre-visit activities. DON'T RUSH this activity! Students lose interest immediately if they view this as an overwhelming task with no time for successful completion.
- Emphasize that students will be doing the important work of real scientists (field botanists, prairie restorationists) as they evaluate their quadrat and that the data they gather will be recorded and used to determine the success of the restoration and future plans for the site.
- If the students are not well versed in plant identification and you cannot readily get from quadrat to quadrat, plan to have one chaperone for each group to keep them on task and help them with identification. Be sure to provide field guides, photos, etc.
- Within each quadrat study group, have everyone work together on plant identification. When that is completed and everyone agrees, then have each member select one of the plants to count. One student can act as data recorder. DO NOT expect 100% accuracy on plant identification and/or % coverage. Plant identification can be very difficult depending on the time of year and whether or not flowers are present.