Variety of life

Description

Students are divided up into small groups (6 groups needed) and given a Kingdom to research – the ‘extra’ kingdom allows consideration of viruses.

Although Protoctista are not on their syllabus, this has been included and could be used as extension material for your brighter students (differentiation task).

Each group produces a presentation using the medium of their choice on their kingdom, which they then present to the rest of the class. Lots of creativity and variety: PowerPoints and posters but also a dance routine and a rap session!

The class may need to be given certain guidelines as to the minimum facts they need to include (to prevent them from missing out major diagnostic features) – depending on your exam board, this could come directly from the syllabus.

Comments

Students like to opportunity to work in groups and to direct their own learning. As we are quite a theatrical school our students love any opportunity to perform to the rest of the class! They also quite like the slight air of competition induced when they have to justify why their kingdom is the best.

Worksheet

You can download this short worksheet (26 KB) which describes the activity for students.

The full version of this worksheet included a range of colour images from a variety of sources. This was to help students with no easy access to computers and images. Also it was a way of ensuring that all groups had something colourful. It was useful to include the syllabus specific organisms on these sheets so students were aware of their importance.

Sources of information

• ARKive offers good pictures and video clips of animals.
• There are also free resources for teachers at ARKive education.

Last updated: 19 July 2007