Field Trips
- Grade Level:
- Upper Elementary: Third Grade through Fifth Grade
- Subject:
- Science
- State Standards:
- Utah State Science Core Curriculum Topic, Standard Two: Students will understand that organisms depend on living and non-living things in their environment.
In the classroom students learn about inherited traits. In the field, students examine the traits of juniper trees and play a game to model how the environment can act on traits and affect how trees appear. Students also examine kit fox traits and play a game to discover what happens when a trait provides an advantage for survival.
Essential Question: How do traits affect the survival of plants and animals?
Utah Science with Engineering Education Standards:
Strand 3.2: Effects of Traits on Survival Organisms (plants and animals, including humans) have unique and diverse life cycles, but they all follow a pattern of birth, growth, reproduction, and death. Different organisms vary in how they look and function because they have different inherited traits. An organism’s traits are inherited from its parents and can be influenced by the environment. Variations in traits between individuals in a population may provide advantages in surviving and reproducing in particular environments. When the environment changes, some organisms have traits that allow them to survive, some move to new locations, and some do not survive. Humans can design solutions to reduce the impact of environmental changes on organisms.
Standard 3.2.3 Construct an explanation that the environment can affect the traits of an organism.
Standard 3.2.4 Construct an explanation showing how variations in traits and behaviors can affect the ability of an individual to survive and reproduce.
Background
Traits are characteristics inherited from parents. The traits passed down can be influenced by the environment. Some traits are more common in a population than others. Each individual has many traits in common with others of the same species. Different organisms vary in how they appear and function because they also have different inherited traits. An individual’s overall combination of traits makes them unique. For example, every individual human has their own unique set of traits.
Variations between individuals in a population may provide advantages for surviving and reproducing in particular environments. For example, juniper trees have different capacities for producing a waxy outer coating on their needles and berries. Some individuals produce a heavy waxy coating and others a thin coating. In a drought or if the climate becomes more dry, plants with thicker wax coverings dry more slowly than those with thinner coatings, making them more likely to survive to set a crop of seeds. These traits are passed onto succeeding generations because those with the best protection against drying will survive and reproduce. In reality, plants possess a whole range of traits that work together. The population, not the individual, adapts.
When the environment changes, some organisms have traits that allow them to survive, some move to new locations, and some do not survive.
The Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma), along with the pinyon pine, forms the most prevalent plant community of the Colorado Plateau—the pinyon-juniper woodland—between 4,500 and 7,000 feet above sea level. Junipers can be identified by their bark, leaves, and fruit. Their bark is gray or light brown and often hangs in loose, fibrous strips. Leaves are dark green, flat and scaly and do not drop in the fall. Their fruit is technically a tiny pinecone. This pea-sized light blue berry contains one or two seeds and is covered with a drought-resistant waxy coating.
Junipers can withstand drought conditions that often kill other plants and trees. Their hidden secret is a massive underground root system, which accounts for two-thirds of a tree’s total mass. A juniper’s taproot can penetrate 40 feet straight down in search of water. It also sends out lateral roots, which may reach 100 feet or more from the tree. The roots are especially hardy. Even when knocked over by wind, junipers often continue to grow. Junipers can self-prune some branches to conserve water and ensure the survival of the tree.
Junipers grow very slowly, usually only about 0.05 inches in diameter per year. A juniper standing only five feet tall may be 50 years old. Under severe conditions, Utah juniper trees persist in stunted forms. A 6-inch tree with a 24-inch taproot may also be over 50 years old. Junipers typically live from 350 to 700 years. No two junipers ever seem to look alike. Some are bushy, some have multiple trunks, and many have poorly formed crowns that are a mixture of live and dead branches.
After they reach 30 years old, Utah junipers produce abundant seeds most years. Because seeds contain dormant embryos and impermeable seed coats, they need a period of "after-ripening" and usually germinate the second season following maturity. The seeds are long-lived. In one study, 17% of Utah juniper seeds germinated after 45 years. In general, around 8 to 49% of seeds germinate.
Kit Foxes (Vulpes macrotis) are the smallest canid in North America. They are buff-colored with large, bushy, black-tipped tails roughly one third of their total length. Typical kit foxes weigh 4 or 5 pounds and stand about a foot tall at the shoulder. They have large ears, big eyes, furry feet, and a very narrow pointy muzzle.
Kit foxes dig multiple dens and are the only canines to use dens year-round. They use their claws to dig dens in the sandy areas of grasslands and desert scrub. They are nocturnal. Retreating to the relative coolness and humidity underground during the day helps them to survive in hot, arid environments.
Kit foxes prey mainly on kangaroo rats and rabbits; however, they also eat reptiles, ground-nesting birds, insects, and very little plant material. They use their keen senses of smell and hearing to find occupied burrows, which they dig into to catch mice or ground squirrels. They chase down rabbits and pounce on grasshoppers. Kit Foxes can survive long periods without water, gaining what they need from the blood and moisture in their prey.
An Inventory of Traits
Essential question: What are traits and how can they help living things survive?
Materials: Pictures of visible traits; one copy of the trait graph for each class; colored markers; color blind test.
Procedure:
1) Write “Traits” on the board. Explain traits are characteristics and can be things you see or ways you act. Discuss examples of human traits. Include things like hair color and height, as well as if you can play the piano and the language you speak. Ask students to share what they know about traits.
2) Explain some traits are common in a population (or class) while others are not. For example, many people are right-handed, but there are a fair number of lefties. Tell students we will figure out what traits are most common in our class and which ones are rare (and make us unique). Use the document camera to show pictures of the traits. As you describe each trait, encourage students possessing the trait to stand. Under the document camera, write and graph the number of students with each trait. Remind students each of them has a unique set of traits. (10-12 min)
3) Discuss where we get our traits and explain the difference between inherited and environmental traits, as well as learned behaviors. Ask students if they’ve heard someone say, “You have your mother’s eyes or your father’s smile?” When traits are passed down from our parents or ancestors, that means traits are “inherited.” These are traits we can’t change (mostly) and the ones we get when we are born. Explain other traits are influenced by our environment. Ask students the following: If I was a tree, and I got traits from my parents to grow 10 feet, but then I didn’t get enough water, would I still grow to be 10 feet? Explain some traits change when our environment changes or as we grow. Ask students to list other traits that might change with the environment. Discuss things like injuries or scars, speaking a language, or lizards that change colors to blend in with the environment.
4) Explain that animals and plants also have traits that are inherited and environmental or learned. Show students a few examples of canine traits and discuss if the trait is (1) inherited (2) environmental (3) both/ it depends. Then give groups of students cards with canine traits and have them sort the cards into two piles: inherited or environmental/ learned behaviors.
*Common Misconceptions: Students may think the more common traits are “better”, but this is not the case. Sometimes traits simply show up more frequently in the human population.
Juniper
Essential Question: What traits allow Utah Junipers to survive in the desert habitat?
Materials: 4 cookie sheets; magnets with juniper trait pictures (4 sets); color-coded juniper environment cards; plastic cups (1 per student).
Procedure:
1) Prior to arriving at the teaching station, gather students around a series of juniper trees. Ask students to describe things they notice about the trees’ parts, how each tree differs from other junipers they have seen, and any patterns they observe. Discuss how the similarities are often traits. (2-3 min)
2) Tell students they will examine other juniper trees to find traits that are the same and traits that are different. To help them explore all their tree’s parts, each pair will receive a juniper tree magnet board. Show students how to sort the traits their tree exhibits, and ask them to pick their favorite trait. Have students pick a partner and assign them to a tree. (2-3 min)
3) Once students sort their magnet boards, gather students, and have each pair lead the group to their tree to present their observations and what they like most about each tree. After all the presentations, discuss patterns students notice. Ask if the trees all have the same parts and what similarities and differences they noticed between them. (5-7 min)
4) Lead students to a young juniper tree and compare the traits of this tree to the older trees. Ask students to turn to their partner and discuss why this tree has some of the same traits as the other trees, but not others. Ask students if humans have traits that don’t show up until we are adults. For example, men grow beards. Could trees be the same? Use wrinkles as an example to discuss how environment effect traits. When humans get older, we get wrinkles, but some people get more wrinkles than others. A person’s environment or their behavior can influence how wrinkly they get. Ask students if any of their trees had dead branches. Ask why some trees exhibit this trait and others don’t? Listen to their predictions, and then tell students you are going to turn them all into juniper trees to explore this question. (3-4 min)
5) Turn students into juniper trees, give them boundaries and ask them to plant themselves. Make sure some students are further from the wash (or a line) than the others. Place a juniper environment card face down next to each student to mark their spot and give them each a plastic cup to put on top of it. Review things plants need to survive and where water runs when it rains. Tell students their job is to stretch their roots to the wash by walking to the wash and collecting one packet of water at a time (a rock), which they will bring back and put it in their cup. Have them repeat for 20 – 30 seconds.
6) Afterwards, count how many “water packets” each student collected. If students collected fewer than four rocks, they did not collect enough water to support the whole tree. Junipers have a trait that they can turn off water to a single branch. Give these students the choice to “cut off” one of their arms, or to “die of thirst”. If they choose to cut off a limb, they should keep one hand behind their back. Repeat for one or two more rounds. Describe the weather pattern as students collect water. “Dry” years should be a short ten second round, while a “wet” year could last 30-40 seconds. (7-10 min)
7) When finished, encourage students to make observations about each other. Discuss the traits showing up in the trees that weren’t seen at the start of the game. Notice which “trees” have dead limbs and which do not. Ask if a tree’s location can affect the traits it exhibits. If so, would we see this in other places? Discuss what happens if living things can’t get enough food or water. Remind students how cutting off a limb might help juniper trees survive, but this ability is not used unless needed. All juniper trees have this ability or trait, but not all juniper trees need to use it, so we might not see the effects of this trait in every tree. (2 min)
8) If time, let students turn over their environment cards. Discuss which trees are getting all the things they need to survive. Discuss student observations about the environment those trees live in compared to the more scraggly trees. (2 min)
Kit Fox
Essential Question: What physical traits allow kit foxes to survive in the desert?
Materials: Fiery Fox puppet; Fox photo flip book; ear size dice.
Procedure:
1) Ask students if any of them have dogs at home? Show the Canidae family image and explain dogs, arctic foxes, and wolves are all distantly related. Encourage students to discuss similarities and differences in their traits. Explain that while they are in the same family, each species has unique traits been passed down from their great great great great great grandparents. (2-3 min)
2) Introduce Fiery Fox and tell students he is a kit fox. Fiery Fox has traits which make it easier for him to survive in Arches National Park. For example, he’s small and sandy colored. Through the puppet, ask students to name other traits Fiery Fox has which help him survive in Arches National Park. As students name traits, have Fiery Fox show pictures of his relatives that demonstrate those traits.
3) When a student names teeth, show the image of fox teeth. Have students compare their teeth to the pointy teeth of the kit fox by feeling their canine teeth with their tongue. Kit foxes’ razor-sharp teeth can slice off pieces of meat to swallow. Discuss if students could rip off meat in a similar way. Without such sharp teeth, could a kit fox eat enough to survive?
4) Show a picture of the fox’s paws. Discuss how their paws and claws help them dig a den to curl up in. Have students spread apart in the wash and give them thirty seconds to dig a den. Afterwards, see if students can curl up in their den. Discuss how they could have dug deeper if they had bigger paws or claws like a fox. If foxes had different paws, would foxes be able to stay warm enough to survive?
5) Return to the rock. Ask students with dogs at home if their dogs use their tails to communicate. For example, when a student comes home, how does their dog say hello? Ask students if people ever use gestures to communicate. Wave at the kids and ask them what you are saying with your wave. Let the kids take turns demonstrating a “school appropriate gesture” for their group and having the group guess what they are saying. Discuss ways being able to communicate with their family would help a fox survive.
6) Show students the picture of a kit fox with big ears and discuss how having big ears helps a fox hear better. Their hearing is sensitive enough to hear a kangaroo rat moving underground in its burrow. Have students cup their hands around their ears and listen as you talk, then compare the sound of your voice without extra big ears.
7) Tell students you are going to do an activity to discover how certain traits, like ear size, can affect the number of foxes with those traits in an area. Have students line up in two groups: The “Long-Eared Kit Foxes” and the “Short-Eared Kit Foxes.” Have the long-eared foxes stretch their arms long above their heads with their hands cupped to symbolize their long ears. Short-eared foxes should put their curled hands by their ears. Designate a “graveyard,” and several yards away, station two dice in their “hunting ground.” When you say go, the first person from each team will run to the hunting ground and roll the dice. Ask students to predict which group will end up with more foxes.
8) If a student rolls, “You don’t find dinner,” then that student “starves” and goes to the graveyard. If a student rolls an animal, the student returns to their den and adds a student from the graveyard to their group as a baby fox. That baby now takes on the ear size of the group it joins, regardless of what they were before they starved. If a student rolls an animal but no students are in the graveyard, then that student returns to their den and does not add another member to their team. Periodically, have teams demonstrate their ear size.
9) Keep playing until very few or no students remain on one team. It should be the Short-Eared Kit Foxes who do not survive. Ask students why it might be easier for kit foxes with long ears to catch dinner than for kit foxes with short ears? What advantages do these kit foxes have?Discuss why long-eared kit foxes would be likely to have babies who also have long ears. (10 min)
10) Have students return to the rock. Discuss whether other canines with other traits could survive as well in Arches. Show pictures of other foxes. Discuss traits these foxes exhibit. Ask if those traits would make it easier or harder to survive in Arches National Park. If not, discuss environments more suited for their traits. Discuss what happens animals without the traits they need to survive in a particular environment. Refer to the ear size game to discuss the idea that animals with traits which make life harder might not die off all at once. Over time, their numbers get smaller. Alternatively, the number of animals with traits that make life easier gets larger. (2-3 min)
Note: Activities in this lesson can be done in any order.
If you were a park ranger
(Adapted from the Mystery Science Lesson “How long can people survive in outer space?)
Essential Question: How do environmental traits change?Materials: traits worksheet; stopwatch;
Procedure:
1) Briefly review what students learned about fox and juniper traits. Remind students traits include everything you notice when you look at someone, like the color of their eyes, and can also include things people cannot see but can measure, like activities and behaviors. For example, you can measure how strong someone is by testing how many weights they can lift, or you can tell how fast they are by timing them with a stopwatch.
2) Ask students to think about the human traits we measured for the pre-trip, such as eye color and rolling your tongue. Ask students if those traits would ever change. Remind students everyone gets some traits from their parents (inherited traits), and these do not tend to change.
3) Explain other traits can change depending upon things in the environment. Discuss what they discovered about the juniper trees that didn’t get enough water. Discuss human traits that do and do not change depending on the environment.
4) Ask students if they know some park rangers give tours in Arches National Park for visitors every day. Ask students what they think that would be like. Remind students what challenges they faced hiking in Arches(climbing, jumping, balancing). Ask which traits might be enhanced by being a park ranger and why those traits might change.
5) Tell students we will be doing an activity to find out what might happen if they became a park ranger at Arches National Park. Tell them we can’t send them to Arches to be a park ranger for a year, but we can measure some of their traits right now and make predictions about how they would change. Hand out worksheets, and have students find a partner. Then go over each of the following exercises together:
Balance like a Tree: Ask students to remember what it was like to balance along narrow ledges. One of the traits that could change is balance. Do students think rangers at Arches get better at balancing? To measure balance standing upright, start with arms out and stand on one leg. We will see if you can balance for 30 seconds. Repeat on the other leg.
Jumping: Ask students if they remember leaping over cracks. Ask students if they think rangers jump further with more practice. Have students measure how far they can jump from a standing position. Demonstrate how to use their worksheets to measure how many feet they can jump.
Agility: Explain the meaning of agility. Students will waddle like a duck, while making patterns with their footsteps. Demonstrate recreating a shape on the ground. Start simple by recreating a circle. Then try to write the word “fox” with your feet. Have students count the number of times they can spell fox in 30 seconds.
Speed (Bridge Spins): Ask students if they think rangers hiking in Arches National Park every day will improve their speed. Tell students they are going to do a reverse-bridge shape like a crab walk, only they are going to spin in a circle. Have students count how many times they can spin in 15 seconds. Have your partner count your spins.
6) Discuss how these traits might change if you were a park ranger for a year. Ask students to imagine why they might change.
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Mystery Science Lesson: How long can people (and animals) survive in outer space?https://mysteryscience.com/animals/mystery-8/traits-environmental-variation/267
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Last updated: July 25, 2022