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A Guide to Common Freshwater Invertebrates by J.
Reese Voshell is an excellent guide to macros for middle and high school
students.
Check
out these resources!
Virtual
Pond Dip for microscopic critters Virtual
Pond Dip
for
macroinvertebrates - What lurks in your pond?
It's
a Stream Bug's Life Website
Using
Leaf Packs to Collect Macroinvertebrates (activities and ideas)
Using Kick Nets to Collect
Macroinvertebrates
(activities and ideas)
The
Stream Study website
Project GREEN
Lamotte
Company
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Macroinvertebrates
are animals that do not have backbones and can
be seen with the naked eye. Macroinvertebrates, or "bugs", live mainly on the
stream bottom or among the debris on the bottom of a stream. The
macroinvertebrate insects go through metamorphosis as part of their
growth. Click here for information on
insect metamorphosis. Although most bottom dwellers
are insects, they can also be aquatic worms, crustaceans (shrimp, crabs, crayfish),
snails, clams, or arachnids (spiders, etc). Students doing water quality studies really
relish doing macroinvertebrate surveys because they can easily see these bugs, which are
fairly easily keyed out into their major taxonomic groups. Certain
macroinvertebrates have little or no tolerance for pollution, while others can
withstand more. The presence or absence of different macros can indicate a
stream's relative health. For further information,
click here.
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Great new activity for elementary and
middle school students on identifying macroinvertebrates! Check it
out! Stream
Ecology Made Elementary from LaMotte Company-
The exciting classroom adventure that introduces the
connection between stream macroinvertebrates and water quality.
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Activity
#2 : Life is
Short - Then You Die...
The following activity introduces students to macroinvertebrates and how insects
go through their life cycles. This activity uses some worksheets from the Kids in the
Creek curriculum, written by the Bonneville Power Administration, and is used
with their permission. The handouts listed in "c" below are used
with permission from The Stream Study at the University of Virginia (rwebb@virginia.edu).
The handouts for "a" and
"b" below require Adobe Acrobat Reader
software, downloaded free from the Adobe web site.)
Materials:
a) Click here for
Aquatic Insect Life Cycle
Stage handout.
b) Click here for an explanation of their
metamorphosis.
c) Click here for Tolerant
Water Pollution Species, Intolerant
Water Pollution Species and Somewhat
Tolerant handouts.
d) Field guides or other resource material with pictures of
macros, such as the laminated macroinvertebrate flashcards
from the LaMotte Leaf Packs (click on Water Monitoring Equipment, then
click on Macroinvertebrate Monitoring Kits). The field guide "Pond Life" (Golden
Guide from St. Martin's Press, 2001) is excellent, with great
pictures and easy to read text for students.
e) Drawing paper, pencils, and/or black thin-line
pens. Optional: colored pencils or crayons
Procedure:
a) Use the above
handouts and other resources you have to go over basic insect life
cycles and the most common macroinvertebrates. Ask them
if they have ever seen any of these "bugs" or life forms.
Discuss and emphasize the following: they live in the water for all
or most of their life, they only stay in areas suitable for their survival, they
are easy to collect, they differ in their tolerance to the amount and types of
pollution, they are easy to identify, they are crucial for the food chains and
webs existing in a stream, and many live for more than one year.
b) Using their handouts, students can make an enlarged
scientific drawing of their chosen macroinvertebrate, paying attention to detail
and body sections, etc. If flashcards from the LaMotte Leaf Packs are
available, the back side of each have black and white drawings of each macro to aide in drawing. Students should work in pencil first, then when satisfied
with what they have, outline and fill in details with black fine line pens.
Colored pencils or crayons can be used to give it accurate color.
c) On the back of their drawing, in pencil, they should put the
name of the macro, and give three characteristics about it, including whether it
is tolerant, not tolerant, or somewhat tolerant to pollution. These
characteristics can be found on the back of the LaMotte flashcards, or on the
handouts mentioned above.
e) Each student stands and shows their macro to the class;
they read the clues one at a time on the back. The class guesses which
macro it is. You can give points if desired: if someone gets it
after the first clue is given, they get three points; if two clues have to
be given, two points are given, and so on.. If no one guesses correctly
after all clues are read, the student who drew the macro gets the whole three
points to themselves.
Extensions and Assessment Ideas:
Technology:
a)
If you are using kick nets or D-nets, you are outside and
this is the perfect time to take a digital camera and have one or several
students designated as the camera team. They can take pictures of students
and also of the macroinvertebrates which may be found. If you or your
school does not have a digital camera, most likely one of your students does and
can bring it. Download the pictures on a classroom computer and have them
accessible for students doing writing, research write-ups, etc, on their water
quality studies.
b) Have your
students go to the
EPA
website on macroinvertebrates. It has excellent real photos of macros,
divided into those that prefer clean, somewhat clean, or polluted waters.
For older students (grades 5 and up) try
The
Stream Study website
by the University of Virginia. On this site students
can try to key out macros from six different stream sites, and then decide
whether that stream is poor, fair, good, or excellent in water quality depending
on the number and types of macros found.
Math:
a)
Have
students use their data to do a simple graph on
what type of macros they find and how many of each.
b) If you are using The
Streamkeeper's Field Guide: Watershed Inventory and Stream Monitoring Methods (1996,
1999), you will find the information necessary to complete a biotic index
on the creek area you have studied macroinvertebrates from. This is an
excellent activity using basic math skills of computing, averaging, percentages,
etc.
Using
Poetry, Writing and Language Arts:
a) By doing
simple haikus, acrostics,
or poems students can show their learning of the
importance of macroinvertebrates and what they have discovered in the field.
b) Have
your students focus on one macroinvertebrate and draw it.
Watercolors, pastels, etc can be used. Let their drawing be the beginning
of a creative writing piece, or a story about "a day in the life of a
macro", etc.
c) Create
a class book of macroinvertebrate stories and drawings.
Movement
Moments:
Group students together in pairs
or large groups as desired. Give them 5-10 minutes to come up with a
way to use their bodies to show how a specific macroinvertebrate moves
through the its typical day in the stream, and/or goes through its complete or
incomplete metamorphosis as it grows. Use
the worksheets listed above under "Materials" which can be downloaded.
If students are familiar with the life stages they
should be able to be very creative in how they portray their insect moving from
one stage to the other, and the other students can guess what stage, or what
insect, they are portraying.
Note: For more information about including movement into
regular classroom lessons, see the Creative
Dance website. It includes information about Anne Green Gilbert
and her dance company, with tips on including movement into
whatever you do. Also, Anne Gilbert's two books on dance, Creative
Dance for all Ages, and Teaching
the 3 R's Through Movement will help you get past the anxiety of
doing movement with your students for the first time, help you teach
students to respect moving and working closely with other students, and
will also give you good hints on how to incorporate movement into
all subject areas, including science. An excellent CD for classroom
use is Music
for Creative Dance -
Contrast
& Continuum by Eric Chappelle. This is an instrumental album with a
wide variety of music styles and sounds appropriate for many different
classroom applications. Movement ideas are included in the CD booklet.
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