YEARS 7–12 IDEAS FOR THE CLASSROOM
Ecological Simulation Game
By Margaret Wright
If you have not checked out the free website “Science By Doing”,
https://www.sciencebydoing.edu.au/ it is well worth your time to
do so. It is designed to cover the Australian Science Curriculum,
and has many and varied activities for Years 7–10.
If you create an account on the website as a teacher, you are
given access to a wide variety of resources and support materials
One activity we have incorporated into our program for many
years now, when teaching stage 4 Ecology, is a game of tag
structured around predator/prey relationships. The NSW syllabus
for the Australian Curriculum Science K–10 prescribes the
following content :
LW5 Science and technology contribute to finding solutions to
conserving and managing sustainable ecosystems.
Students:
Figure 2: Teacher Support menu
a. construct and interpret food chains and food webs, including
examples from Australian ecosystems;
b. describe interactions between organisms in food chains
and food webs, including producers, consumers and
decomposers (ACSSU112).
Students can create their own accounts and explore the units
without access to the teacher materials.
The activity we use in the ‘Circle of Life’ is Activity 2.5. The activity
is described as “Students participating in a role/play simulation
game to build an understanding of the pyramid of numbers
representation of a sustainable ecosystem.”
The game can be found in the Year 7 “Circle of Life” Unit, on
the “Science by Doing” website. Students love the variety of an
outdoor lesson. The school oval is a perfect place to conduct this
game.
Figure 3: Activity 2.5 teacher support dropdown menu
Figure 1: Circle of Life entry point
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SCIENCE EDUCATIONAL NEWS VOL 67 NO 4