While walking in your school complex, you may have noticed that all corners/areas do not look the same. Some areas have grass, bushes and weeds, while some are rocky and without any vegetation. During the rainy season, there may be new plants growing up on concrete walls. An area that is moist may have mosquitoes and insects in abundance.
If you look closely, you may be surprised to find out that not only do the places and corners look different, they are home to different kinds of vegetation, insects and animals.
Are the living and non-living things you find on your school campus different from those that you will find, say, in a pond?
Does there appear to be a relationship between the non-living things and living things of any specific area?
Field Trip/Walk - a walk around the field
Let us go for an excursion around the school to discover Diversity (both living and non-living ) and their interrelationship among things in nature.Excursion, here, means observing the world outside your classroom, gathering information about non-living and living things. Then coming back to class and organizing the information collected.
The room you are in, the walls, ground/field, roof, lawns- observe everything during your walk.
Precautions:
1. Do not touch any insect or other organisms. Observe them from a distance under the supervision of your teacher.
2. Do not venture alone towards the pond, lake or river.
3. Do not play with any water collected outside. Mosquitoes may be present near the water bodies. So make sure you are fully covered - wear full-sleeved clothes, pants, salwar-kurta,etc.
Observation
Whatever you observe outside, should be noted in your table (see the table given below).
For example, if you see a spider - is it on the wall or in its web?
Are there any insects stuck in that web? What are they?
From where could these insects have come?
According to you, why did the spider choose a corner for making its web?
Similarly, look at the soil, the stones-
Are there any insects in the soil?
What kinds of plants are growing in the soil?
What are the kind of stones and pebbles that you see there?
Can you also see rotten or dry leaves, grass etc. in the soil?
What do you think is the use of these dry and rotten leaves?
If you can see water around
Is the water clean or dirty?
Which insects/worms does it have?
Why are they breeding and flourishing there?
If you see a honeybee
Where was it seen?
Where does it stop and rest?
Why does it rest there?
Where is its hive?
Does it get some kind of help from the tree?
If you see trees
What is the soil around it like?
Are there any birds living in the trees? Which ones?
Are there any insects on the tree?
Is the tree also getting something from the air and soil?
Perhaps you will also see some organisms that live under the surface layer of the soil; write about them too in the table.
The information above is only to help you make the observations. You have to collect more information.
This table will help you organize the information you have collected during the Field Walk/excursion.
Serial
number
Where it is found
Living or non-living
If living
where/ from what does it get food
Ants
Pieces of rock
Grass
Plastic
Wherever you stand, if you observe carefully, you will find an entire ecosystem that has living and non-living things depending on each other. There is an interrelationship between them. You can find this connection at the global level or just a single tree is enough to understand it. If you wish, you can take the pond or lake as a system and look for interrelationships within it.
Each of these ecosystems, a pond or a tree, may appear to be different and far away from each other. The organisms living in it may be different from each other but these systems are connected to each other as well. In these systems, there is an interaction between the living and the non-living. There is an interdependence between them. A change in one system can impact/affect another system as well. For example, if the pond dries up, not only will the life within it die, the plants around it will also dry up.
In any ecosystem, there can be two types of living things - one which can be seen with our eyes ( e.g. birds, insects, animals) and second microorganisms which cannot be seen with naked eyes (e.g. bacteria, virus etc.).
In one square centimeter soil, there can be thousands of microorganisms. In the category of non-living, we have sunlight, air, soil etc.
In an Ecosystem, we see the interrelationship and interdependency between the living and non-living components.
In the video given below, you could see some bacteria
Exploration of an ecosystem
While walking in your school complex, you may have noticed that all corners/areas do not look the same. Some areas have grass, bushes and weeds, while some are rocky and without any vegetation. During the rainy season, there may be new plants growing up on concrete walls. An area that is moist may have mosquitoes and insects in abundance.
If you look closely, you may be surprised to find out that not only do the places and corners look different, they are home to different kinds of vegetation, insects and animals.
Are the living and non-living things you find on your school campus different from those that you will find, say, in a pond?
Does there appear to be a relationship between the non-living things and living things of any specific area?
Field Trip/Walk - a walk around the field
Let us go for an excursion around the school to discover Diversity (both living and non-living ) and their interrelationship among things in nature.Excursion, here, means observing the world outside your classroom, gathering information about non-living and living things. Then coming back to class and organizing the information collected.
The room you are in, the walls, ground/field, roof, lawns- observe everything during your walk.
Observation
Whatever you observe outside, should be noted in your table (see the table given below).
For example, if you see a spider - is it on the wall or in its web?
Similarly, look at the soil, the stones-
Is the water clean or dirty?
does it have?
Perhaps you will also see some organisms that live under the surface layer of the soil; write about them too in the table.
The information above is only to help you make the observations. You have to collect more information.
This table will help you organize the information you have collected during the Field Walk/excursion.
Serial
number
Where it is found
Living or non-living
If living
where/ from what does it get food
Ants
Pieces of rock
Grass
Plastic
Wherever you stand, if you observe carefully, you will find an entire ecosystem that has living and non-living things depending on each other. There is an interrelationship between them. You can find this connection at the global level or just a single tree is enough to understand it. If you wish, you can take the pond or lake as a system and look for interrelationships within it.
Each of these ecosystems, a pond or a tree, may appear to be different and far away from each other. The organisms living in it may be different from each other but these systems are connected to each other as well. In these systems, there is an interaction between the living and the non-living. There is an interdependence between them. A change in one system can impact/affect another system as well. For example, if the pond dries up, not only will the life within it die, the plants around it will also dry up.
In any ecosystem, there can be two types of living things - one which can be seen with our eyes ( e.g. birds, insects, animals) and second microorganisms which cannot be seen with naked eyes (e.g. bacteria, virus etc.).
In one square centimeter soil, there can be thousands of microorganisms. In the category of non-living, we have sunlight, air, soil etc.
In an Ecosystem, we see the interrelationship and interdependency between the living and non-living components.
In the video given below, you could see some bacteria