Why learn about insects?
Original date: October 17, 2018
Click here to access this webinar
Presenter: Rob Bixler
Description: Negative experiences with insects so strongly shape young peoples’ perceptions that even the best efforts of environmental educators sometimes fail. Insects are their own worst spokespersons. The only bugs that tend to hang around us are those that bite us, suck our blood, defensively sting, or infest our food. Our seemingly unimportant relationship with insects dramatically influences our pesticide use, understanding of biodiversity, home landscaping preferences, and participation in outdoor recreation. In numerous small-scale studies of attitudes and knowledge about insects and spiders, these “bugs” were anything but popular in rankings of animal preferences, far below birds and mammals. In this presentation, I argue that a wide variety of personal, community and societal benefits can emerge if we can find more ways to focus our students’ attention on the lowly, creepy critters that most people just call “bugs.” Bugs should and can be the ideal means of teaching many environmental education concepts to elementary-age children.
Rob Bixler (rbixler@clemson.edu) is professor emeritus in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at Clemson University in South Carolina. His teaching and research focus on how environmental education and outdoor recreation can be integrated to produce emotionally powerful learning experiences. He is currently authoring the Bug-ket list, 80 insects that everyone needs to find before they die. His lecture on what environmental education can learn from college football is a favorite at environmental education and heritage interpretation conferences.
Activity Sheets:
Various ones on common insects in the Greater Toronto Area, published by the Guelph Arboretum (easy to find via Google; from Allison Best)
Activities:
*Bat and Moth Game: Take students outside at night or turn off all the lights, and then have them circle up at arms length and have them hold hands. Have 2 students go into the center, blindfolded. Give each of the two a shaker, one (blindfolded) with large beads (big clatter=bat’s echolocation), and one with small beads/sand (quiet clatter=moth’s location). The circled students are trees. Trees do not speak unless the bat reaches for them at which point they whisper “Tree.” The Bat shakes its rattle, and the moth responds. The idea is for the bat to try to catch the moth using just its ears. (from Sun)
*Milkweed Beetles squeak when you hold them. Kids find it so exciting! (from Allison Best)
*You can find larva inside goldenrod galls in the winter; if you bring them in, they warm up and move around, even if they were frozen. (from C. Walker)
*Kids can make bug restrainers (from Nick Baker’s bug book) that allow close observation of body parts to see what it is adapted to do. (form C. Walker)
*Don’t cut plant stems in fall; bugs use them as homes and nests! (from Susan Sunflower)
Books:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1112502.Bugs_In_The_System
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/621386.Stokes_Guide_to_Observing_Insect_Lives
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/504855.Pet_Bugs
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/815394.Parasite_Rex
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1844030.Stokes_Guide_to_Nature_in_Winter
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234712252_The_Pillbug_Project_A_Guide_to_Investigation
https://bloomsbury.com/us/nick-bakers-bug-book-9781472913791/
Chatbox:
Click here to access the chatbox.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
