I’m Lindsey, and I’ll be sharing with you the activity Habitat Scramble. This activity is a role playing simulation where students act as species in a habitat, trying to survive by collecting essential resources, water, soil, space, air, food, and shelter. After completing the activity, students will have a better understanding of what services habitats provide, as well as the importance of carrying capacity and how disturbances in a habitat can impact the carrying capacity.
This is an elementary level activity with strong ties to science and social studies, but it also uses some basic math skills.
How to Prep for the Activity Habitat Scramble
Before beginning the activity, you’ll have to do a little bit of preparation. You’ll be making habitats, so you’ll need either a circle of yarn or a hula hoop to represent your habitats. You’ll need enough circles or habitats for each group of four in your class. You’ll also have to copy and cut out the habitat cards. You’ll need one set for each student. So if you have a full habitat with four students, that would be 24 cards total. If your class isn’t divisible by four, you’ll need an additional habitat. So for example, if you have 26 students, your additional habitat would have two sets of cards.
Right before class, lay out your habitat circles and spread out your habitat cards within those circles.
Habitat Scramble: Activity Procedure
Now when you’re ready to begin the activity, you’ll first want to activate some background knowledge for students, asking them, what is a habitat? And having them name some particular species that live in certain habitats. You could even localize this by talking about a specific habitat, like a forest, around your school.
Next, direct your students’ attention to the habitats that you’ve laid out on the floor. Explain that they will be a species trying to survive in each habitat. However, only four of them can survive in a habitat at one time. Tell the students that at your signal, they’ll find a habitat and collect the resources they need to survive. One of each habitat card. Water, soil, shelter, space, air, and food.
I’ve invited four friends to do this activity using a sample habitat.
After all the students have collected their habitat cards, you’ll ask, is your habitat healthy? And they’ll know their habitat is healthy if each of them have been able to collect all six things that they need in order to survive. At this point, ask all the students to return the habitat cards to the circles, and they’ll actually leave their habitat and face away.
Now, you, the teacher, will create some sort of disturbance in the habitats. So, for example, you could decide to create a disturbance related to a development encroaching on your habitats. In that case, you’d want to take away some shelter and some space habitat cards.
Now, ask all the students to return to the habitats. It can be the same habitat as their first one or a different one. And they’ll try to, again, collect all the cards that they need in order to survive. One of each. If a person does not have all six cards, they’ll have to step away from their habitat circle. That represents them not being able to collect the resources they needed to survive.
In our example, we’re using a development encroaching on the habitat. So, you’ll see two of our students were not able to collect space or shelter cards. Now, ask all the students to, again, return their cards to the habitat, leave the area, and face away.
At this point, you, the teacher, will remove an entire habitat. When students return, some of them won’t have a habitat or resources to survive. Ask the students who are in a habitat if others can join. And what will happen if other species join their habitat? Well, there wouldn’t be enough resources to go around. This is a great example of carrying capacity because the habitat has finite resources that can only support a certain number of students.
To debrief this activity, we offer several discussion questions. One, ask students to specifically think about how humans change habitats and ways that we can protect habitats to make sure that they stay healthy for all the species in them. And that’s the activity Habitat Scramble.
For more great lessons on population issues, check out our website, www.populationeducation.org. Thanks for watching!