Lesson Plan

⁠Forest Communities

Conifer cones on the ground
Grade Level:
Middle School: Sixth Grade through Eighth Grade
Subject:
Science
Lesson Duration:
60 Minutes

Essential Question

What makes different conifer trees unique?

Objective

Students will be able to:
• Ethically collect tree needles, cones and leaves.
• Identify local native trees from their needles and cones.
• Be able to associate tree species with climate, terrain, elevation, and successional state.

Background

This lesson is one part of the Work House Program A Glacier National Park Science and Indian Education Program. It can be completed as a stand alone lesson or as part of the greater Work House course. 

Since this Work House lesson was created, two amazing resources have been developed that bring the concepts from this lesson to life:
1) The FireWorks Education Trunk (Missoula Fire Sciences Lab) -available to borrow for free from numerous locations in Montana, Idaho, and Colorado.
2) The Fire on the Land DVD (Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes Fire History Project). This should be in all school libraries.

Teachers may want to gather example needles, cones, leaves and seeds to show students what you want them to collect. The FireWorks trunk has pressed specimens of native: black cottonwood; Douglas-fir; Engelmann spruce; lodgepole pine; ponderosa pine; quaking aspen; subalpine fir; western larch; and whitebark pine. They are used with the “Mystery Trees” Activities 4-3, p. 79-81 (elementary grades) and 4-4, p. 82-89 (middle school grades), of the FireWorks Curriculum along with worksheets and felt boards (also supplied in the trunk) to help students to identify trees. These would be perfect “warm-up” activities before students went out to collect their own specimens.

The pertinent sections of the “Fire on the Land” DVD for students to look at (homework, group work, or individual work when finished with other assignments) are under the heading “Fire Ecology” and then “Fire Concepts.” The interactive “Forest Succession” (especially the “burn the forest link) and “Disturbance” sections will provide background information for students about how forests change over time and with natural disturbance. As the DVD indicates, “for thousands of years the Salish, Pend d’Oreille, and other tribes of the Northern Rockies periodically set fire to the land, profoundly shaping plant and animal communities.” All four tribes associated with Glacier National Park, the Blackfeet, Salish, Pend d’Oreille and Kootenai were intimately familiar with the plant communities. Then and today, being able to recognize and identify the successional stages of native plant communities provides a great deal of information about the soil conditions, moisture availability, and history of natural disturbances. A field trip to either the St. Mary or Lake McDonald Valleys will allow students to see first hand these native plant communities.

Preparation

Procedure

  1. Review the information on Glacier’s plants from the student reading. Incorporate the FireWorks /and or Fire on the Land lessons.
  2. Ask the students to gather samples of conifer branches and cones, and leaves and seeds of common deciduous trees from the areas around their homes. Discuss ways to minimize damage to trees while making collections and to only collect in areas where they have permission. Emphasize that they should be looking for trees that they believe to be native to the area.
  3. Have the students write descriptive notes of the physical environment from which each specimen was gathered (soils, sun/shade, wet/dry, etc.).
  4. Students should use the tree guide to identify their specimens and to research its characteristics and habitat.
  5. Then students can make leaf, cone, and needle displays. Discuss where the trees they identified might occur in Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park.

Writing Extension

  • Have students display their tree guides and consider making a neighborhood field guide to trees.

Field Trip Extension 

Vocabulary

Botanists, conifers, deciduous, disturbance, naturalist, specimens, understory.

Assessment Materials

Discuss where the trees they identified might occur in Glacier National Park.

Additional Resources

  • Salish -Pend d’Oreille Culture Committee - Phone: (406) 745-4572
  • Kootenai Culture Committee - Phone: (406) 849-5541 .
  • Blackfeet Community College Cultural and Language Division - Phone (406) 338-5441. 
  • Explore more of the “Fire on the Land: Native Peoples and Fire in the Northern Rockies” DVD. Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Fire History Project- the traditional and contemporary use of fire by the Salish and Pend d’Oreille Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation. 
  • Play more video clips from the “At Home in This Place” DVD to tell students about traditional tribal use of the Glacier National Park area and encourage a sense of pride in the historical associations and wise stewardship by tribal ancestors.
  • Use the Kid’s Discover Montana’s Ecosystem to learn more about the plant community types across the state.
  • "Avalanche Basin Audio Tour” created by students from the Univ. of MT.

Contact Information

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Last updated: September 15, 2023