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Ant Lesson Plan - Ant Basics  - London Phelps.doc

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Refer to lesson plan

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Students must write their own mathematics word problem regarding ants on the back on their sheet.

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The kids will then present their diorama to the class explaining:
-what species they chose
-what materials they used
-why they chose each component and how it is key to the survival of the ant species

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They will use the materials provided by the teacher to create a habitat for their ant

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In their groups of two they will first pick a species of ants to make a habitat for.
They will then make a bubble web of ideas that they could do for their diorama of the habitat of their ant

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Activity 1: Do research to answer the following 

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Activity 1: Do research to answer the following 

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Put them into groups of 2 to answer the following questions
-Where do ants live?
-What determines where they live?
-Is there certain climates that ants tend to be found more than others?

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Students will learn the specifics about the anatomy of insects, and in this specific case ANTS! I will go through and discuss the 3 body parts (head, thorax, and abdomen), and how insects have two legs and 6 antenna's

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1. Review the days activities as a class
2. Have each student share a fact they learned that day.

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-How many legs does an ant have?

-How many body parts does an ant have?

-Do ants have antenna’s?

-What is the part of the body that hold the antenna’s?

-Which part of the body holds the legs?

-Ants are a type of _______.

-Which ant is responsible for reproduction and is key to the survival of an ant colony?

-TRUE OR FALSE: All insects have 2 or 3 body parts, and 6-8 legs.

-Our ant farm is what type of ants?

-If there is an estimated 22,000 ants roaming the world, and only 12,500 are identified, how many are not identified?

-abdomen

-soldier ant

-female ant

-male ant

-wings

-worker ant

-22,000

-12,500

-colony

-Dinoponera Ant

-Panda Ant

-Fish Hook Ant

-Velvet Ant

-Bullet Ant

-Exploding Ant

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-ants
-abdomen
-thorax
-head
-antenna's
-insects
-colony
-queen ant
-male ant
-female ant
-soldier ant

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Students will understand how ants each have their own roles to create a functioning colony.

This lesson discusses the basics of ants including their anatomy, different types of ants, and different roles that ants have to form their own colony

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What types of human foods do ants eat?

Do ants prefer foods that are sweet? Salty? Sour?

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Teacher

5 paper plates (for each group)
Food samples (for each group): cookie, apple, bread, carrot, meat

Art supplies: colored construction paper, scissors, markers

Students
Journal to collect data  Pen/pencil

Laptops

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Colony: a community of animals or plants of one kind living close together or forming a physically connected structure

Anthill: a pile of earth made by ants as they dig their underground nest.

Worker Ants: ants that leave the nest to find food for the rest of the colony

Antennae: one of the jointed, movable, sensory appendages occurring in pairs on the heads of insects and most other arthropods.

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This Cute Panda-Ant Is Actually A “Cow Killer” Wasp

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Giant Velvet Ant "cow killer"  1080P close up!!!

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Giant Amazonian Ant   World s Biggest Ant   Dinoponera

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Students will watch 5 videos on exotic ants. Ant videos that do not have words, I will provide facts during the video.

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(2) After students read the following article, they will write facts on the picture below (3 each for each ant role) then put in their AOL.

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Students will learn that ants will typically stick to one role. They will be enlightened that Queen Ants are just the baby makers and they have wings. Once they mate with male ants (also known as drones) they find a place to have their colony and reproduce. The non reproducing female ants are the workers.

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Students can calculate the class average on what foods ants prefer and graph those results.

Students could use the ant information cards to try and decipher what ants they’re looking at.

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Have students use various art supplies to create a photo collage of an ant ‘stealing their favorite food(s).

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1. Each group will present their findings to the class and then the class as a whole will discuss their findings and the results of the experiment.

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1. Put students in groups of 3-4.

2. Provide students with the necessary materials and direct them on where to place the plates around the ant hill(s).

3.  At time intervals of 1 hour, 1.5 hours, and 2 hours, have groups return to their area and count the number of ants on each food sample and record the data in journals.

4. Have students calculate the average number of ants found on each sample and create a graph on Excel depicting their results.

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3-LS1-1. Develop models to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycles but all have in common birth, growth, reproduction, and death.

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1. Discuss with the students what types of food they noticed the ants eating. Have them think about the different types of food they’ve seen ants eat on different occasions.

2. Show video How Do Ants Find Food?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IVb2Atu3Jc

3. Explain to students that they will be conducting an experiment to see what types of human food ants prefer.

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2. Do the visual communication activity. 

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2. Do the visual communication activity. 

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a. Today we are going to pretend to be ants! An ant family is called a colony [Define].

b. Instruct students that they will each be getting a color card in a moment. When I say the magic word for today “pheromone”, you will try to find the other people who belong to your colony. But the rule of the game is that you cannot talk. You can only use your eyes to figure it out!

c. Pass out one color card to each student.

d. Say the magic word and make sure that students are following the rules of the game. [No talking!]

e. Time the students to see how long it takes for them to all find their colony.

f. Have students return to their seats. Recollect the color cards.

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The lesson will begin with introducing the topic of ants. It will begin with the definition of entomology and myrmecology. We will do a small activity regarding the parts of an ant (with the goal of finding the antennae).

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-All about ants
-An Ants Environment
-Food they eat
-Ant me Again
-Research
-Research Presentation

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This unit on ants is designed for a summer program. The time span will be three weeks to a month. Since there are many different activities set throughout the day in this summer program, time does vary whether it is in the favor of this unit or not. This is an extensive hands on summer program that also includes topics such as static electricity, art projects (ranging from painting to ceramics), and even activities regarding 3D printing.

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Specific standards will be addressed within the lesson plans.

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Develop models to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycles, but all have in common birth, growth, reproduction, and death

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Students will increase their knowledge on ants regarding roles each ant takes, their body structure, the adaptive elements and habitats of ants, what they eat, and how they communicate to form their colony.

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Now as a wrap up ask them how ants smell pheromones? [antenna]

Ask them how ants tell who is part of their colony and who is not? [pheromones]

Ask them how ants tell their family/colony members they found food? [by laying down pheromone trails] Now ask if they have other questions about ants!

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Connections to the real world around students: 

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Connections to the real world around students: 

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Emphasize that pheromone communication and understanding the language of ants is a question ant scientists are studying and very curious about. Understanding how different organisms communicate is key to understanding their behavior. And more importantly understanding how ants swarm food sources helps you to know how to prevent them from happening. There are many ways to break pheromone trails such as cinnamon, pepper, vinegar, lemon juice and next time you see ants in your kitchen help your parents out by using what you learned today to break their communication!

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. Now we’ve done some activities to understand how ants communicate and find their colony members, but how do they tell other ants where food is? When ants are out searching for food and they find something delicious, how do they tell their colony members where that food is?

2. Let’s do another activity to understand how they do this! Each person at your table group should have a different scent in your vial. Pass them around to smell each type, decide which one is your favorite smell. [As students do this, put up signs (for corresponding scents) on the whiteboard.]

3. Give a string to each student that has a small magnet attached to it.

4. Call up each group of students, one table at a time (call on the quietest tables first) to come up and place their string underneath their favorite scent. Model what this should look like for the students before having them do it.

5. Once all students in the class have placed their strings on the board, choose a volunteer to count the number of strings placed underneath each of the scent signs. Write it on the board to keep track.

6. Lead a discussion with students about the differences. Is there one scent that is more popular than the others? If there are many strings leading to a scent, is it easier to visualize? When ants find food, they put down a pheromone trail so that other members of their colony can come back and find that food too! Then as more ants follow the trail, take the food, and then return to their ant nest, they lay down another trail on top of that first pheromone trail. So then the pheromone gets stronger and stronger so that soon all the ants in the colony are out gathering food from the one point. This is why when you see ant trails leading to your food when you picnic outside or when they eat your pumpkins you leave out for Halloween, or when they find something delicious to eat in your kitchen at home!

7. So now you know how one tiny ant in your home can lead to an ant infestation!

8. Why can’t we smell these trails? Elicit student responses. Brief discussion about scent receptors and how we can detect certain scents, but not others!

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Activity 4: Food Preferences and Pheromone Trails 

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Activity 4: Food Preferences and Pheromone Trails 

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1. Before having students return to their seats, engage them in a conversation about what they would do if they wanted to sneak into an ant colony. What would be your disguise? [If students struggle with thinking about this, first have them think about how they would disguise themselves to sneak someplace as a human. What would be their disguise?]

2. There are animals that mimic [Define mimic on board] the pheromones of an ant.

3. They smell just like an ant, but they are not actually ants, and sometimes don’t even look a lot like an ant.

4. Do you think you have any mimics in your colony? Let’s find out!

5. Remove the cotton from your container and look inside. If you find a plastic ant, you’re an ant, but if you see something else, you are an ant mimic!

6. Once students reveal their true identities, have students put plastic toys back in container, place cotton back in container. Students should return to their seats. Recollect the containers.

7. Show students some images of actual ant mimics inside colonies.

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2. Do the pheromone communication activity. 

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2. Do the pheromone communication activity. 

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a. Today we are going to pretend to be ants! An ant family is called a colony [Define].

b. Instruct students that they will each be getting a canister in a moment. Each of the canisters has a cotton ball that has a specific scent. When I say the magic word for today “pheromone”, you will try to find the other people who belong to your colony. But the rule of the game is that you cannot talk. You can only use your nose to figure it out! Let’s make a hypothesis – do you think you will be able to find your colony members more quickly or more slowly than the previous activity? Why or why not?

c. Pass out one canister without the lid and with a cotton ball soaked in extract to each student.

d. Say the magic word and make sure that students are following the rules of the game. [No talking!]

e. Time the students to see how long it takes for them to all find their colony.

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1. Engage students in a conversation about how ants communicate and how this is similar and different to the way humans communicate. 

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1. Engage students in a conversation about how ants communicate and how this is similar and different to the way humans communicate. 

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a. We talked earlier about how insects and other ants communicate. How do they do this again? [smelling, pheromones]

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3. Connect the activity to the big picture.

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3. Connect the activity to the big picture.

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a. Invite students to reflect on the difficulty of the activity. Was this easy? Hard? Why or why not? Before having students return to their seats, engage them in a conversation about what they would do if they wanted to sneak into an ant colony. What would be your disguise?

b. Emphasize the overall takeaway of the lesson: Insects communicate primarily through chemicals called pheromones. They receive chemical signals through their antennae, process the signal in their brains, and react in different ways depending on the type of chemical.

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1. Engage students in a conversation about how humans use their eyes and vision to understand the world around them. 

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1. Engage students in a conversation about how humans use their eyes and vision to understand the world around them. 

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a. Today we’re going to learn about ant communication, but let’s first think about how humans communicate. What is communication? [Define communication, write on board]

b. How do we communicate with each other? [Verbal, visual]

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· Gather some ideas from the class regarding their favorite foods and how they locate those foods.

· Now instruct all the students to close their eyes and imagine if they couldn’t see. They can only use their sense of smell to find their favorite food. How could they do this? What if it’s not smelly?

· It would be a lot harder to find your favorite foods! This is how ants communicate! Ants lay down a path that smells a certain way to tell their other colony members where their food is [Define pheromone, write on board]

· Insects “smell” with their antennae. The chemicals (which produce an odor) attach to special receptors on the antennae. Insects use these chemical receptors to find food, a mate, a place to lay eggs. For example, worker ants leave a scent trail when they find food, but if the trail is disturbed, they become confused.

· What else do you know about ants? [Gather student responses, draw an ant on the board – don’t forget the antennae!]

· Do they live alone? [No, ants are social animals and live in large groups called colonies. Define colony, write on board. Colonies are basically like ant families.]

· How do ants recognize which other ants are part of their own colony? [Ants recognize others from their colony by their scent.]

· Today we’re going to do some activities to explore ant communication and pheromones!

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Ask each student to think about their favorite food. Turning to the person next to them, discuss what this food is and how you would get it – which cabinet is it in their kitchen? If it’s at a restaurant, how do they walk or drive to the restaurant from their home?

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Laminated small color cards (34 – 4 different colors)
· Film canisters with lids (34)  · Color stickers/stars for lids (34 – at least 4 different to correspond to extracts)
· Cotton balls (at least 34, one for each film canister) · Extracts (at least 4 different – lemon, cinnamon, peppermint, vanilla)
· Small plastic ants (28)
· Small plastic spiders (6) · String or yarn, each 4-5 feet long, with small magnet attached to one end (34)
Laminated images/signs for the four different extracts (lemon, cinnamon, peppermint, vanilla) with magnets on back so they can stick on white board in classroom
· Laminated images of cool ants!

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Students will understand how ants communicate through pheromones/scents and that ants live together in a family unit known as a colony.

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3-LS1-1. Develop models to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycles, but all have in common birth, growth, reproduction, and death.

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1. Pheromone: a chemical substance produced and released into the environment by an animal, especially a mammal or an insect, affecting the behavior or physiology of others of its species.

2. Myrmecology: the branch of entomology that deals with ants.

3. Entomology: the branch of zoology concerned with the study of insects.

4. Antennae: structures that allow the insect to detect odors and communicate.

5. Communication: The exchange of information.

6. Colony: A community of animals or plants of one kind living close together or forming a physically connected structure.