Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

30 minutes	Part B: The Role Of The Entomologist
40 minutes	Part C: The Role Of Ethics In Animal Care

Part A: Activating Prior Knowledge

Preparation:

Where students have not completed the previous lesson in this unit, you will need to prepare large (A1 or A2), pre-printed birds-eye maps of your school grounds (with the key habitats pre-marked). You will need one map for each group of four students.

Step 1.

Begin this lesson by briefly explaining (or recapping, if you completed the previous lesson) what a habitat is. Use the following definition to guide you:

Habitats are natural environments in which an animal or plant usually lives. It needs air, food, water and shelter. Examples of habitats are forests, deserts, mountains and rivers. Smaller examples are called microhabitats. In our school grounds, these could be a log, grass, soil, or a gumtree.

Step 2.

Differentiation:

If students have completed the previous lesson:
- Invite students to return to the groups they were in during the previous lesson and to locate their group's birds-eye maps.
If students have not completed the previous lesson:
- Break the class into groups of four students. Distribute one large (A1 or A2), pre-printed birds-eye maps of your school grounds (with the key habitats pre-marked) to each group.

Step 3.

Ask the students to close their eyes and imagine the school grounds as you tell them a story. Ask them to visualise a walk through the school grounds, visiting each habitat. For example:

“You walk into the school grounds, at the start of your day, in your bare feet. The concrete underneath you is cool. You move onto the grass and move over the field. You see your friends playing by the tall gum trees. As you move closer, it becomes prickly under your feet from the dry leaves. With your friends, you move back over the grass, over the concrete to the playground and the bark beneath you feels crunchy and uneven”.

Step 4.

Once complete, work together as a class to name the microhabitats in the story. Ask students what key features were in each habitat visited (e.g., leaf litter, flowers, bark, soil). Record their observations on the board.

Step 5.

Working in their groups students would now add the microhabitats they identified in their visualisation to their maps.

You should also show students how to create map legends which will allow them to add details and their observations to the map. For example, they may wish to colour a certain part of the map brown to show that it is covered in bark.

Part B: The Role Of The Entomologist

Step 1.

As a class, brainstorm techniques about how we might find out what lives in the microhabitats marked on the map and who might be able to help us with those investigations. The point here is to lead students to the idea that there might be a person whose job it is to investigate insects and their habitats.

Ask the class if they have heard of the term ‘entomologist’ and, if not, Introduce the term entomologist. If any students have specific experience with insects, perhaps as pets or they know an entomologist, ask them to share what they know with the class.

You can then explain to students that entomology is the scientific study of insect species and a branch of zoology. Entomologists study insect species, their environments and their behaviours through observational, experimental and chemical techniques. Entomologists love to spend time in nature: they go out to find species in all sorts of different habitats and microhabitats.

Step 2.

Explain that to study a species, an entomologist has two choices: they can ‘catch and release’ or ‘catalogue’ a species. Ask students what they think the differences are. Clarify student ideas with the following:

‘Catch and release’ is when scientists catch the animal, photograph it or take a small piece of skin/ or blood to test and then release the animals.
‘Catalogue an animal’ is when they can’t get all the information from the catch and release, so they need to take the whole animal.

Ask students to take a moment to think how they feel about these two methods.

Step 3.

Now introduce the word ‘continuum’ to the students. Tell students that you will read out some statements and they must choose a place on the continuum line to show where they stand in terms of agreeing or disagreeing with the statement.

Indicate to students where they will stand for agreeing with it, versus not agreeing and somewhere in the middle if they are not sure (consider placing a line of string along the ground or wall and adding these Agree/Disagree Signs to each of the line). Make sure students understand it doesn’t matter where they stand, it’s just to get an understanding that there are different viewpoints and each of these are okay. Students should know, however, that it’s important to reflect on why they chose to stand where they did.

Read out the following statements and use the discussion points for each statement to help students interrogate their position on the line:

Statement one: “I agree with killing any animal for scientific purposes”.
Suggested discussion points: You may wish to elaborate on what “scientific purposes” might include: to study its anatomy (its physical body and organs), to determine the effect of different drugs on the animal’s body, or to preserve a record of that animal. It’s also important to stress the phrase 'any animal' in this statement to show that it could quite literally be any individual animal, not large numbers of that animal, that is being killed in this scenario. Invite students to then move to the appropriate point on the continuum to represent their viewpoint. Ask students to discuss their decision with a partner and invite discussion from the group.
Statement two: “I agree with killing any species for scientific purposes”.
Suggested discussion points: Does the size of the species matter in the students’ decision-making process? Is it okay to kill pest species? Note: This might be interesting in that students might think about their attitudes towards killing mosquitoes or other insect pests/annoyances.
Statement three: “I agree with killing any animal for food for my family”.
Suggested discussion points: Do students consider it to be more ethically sound to kill animals for food versus scientific study?

Conclude these statements with a summary of what you observed as a teacher.

Step 5.

Sticking with the use of the continuum, invite students to consider a non-human perspective, starting with the statement: “I’m a spider and, if I’m being taken, I want to be eaten quickly and fast”. As before, have students move or remain where they are and discuss their decision with a partner nearby.

Step 6.

Then ask students to visualise being this spider that lives in the bush, for example:

“I’m a lovely, hairy, brown spider, I live under rotten logs and in the leaf litter. I eat flies, moths, grasshoppers and ants. My mother always told me stories of these giant predators, who are as tall as the sky, who took one of her cousins. Billy was his name and she says that, one day, he was getting ready to kill a grasshopper when something was put over him and he was carried away. He felt very scared especially with these giant eyes looking at him. He said he tried to freeze but that didn’t work, so he started to go around in circles hoping to escape but he realised it was all for nothing. There was no escape, so he decided to think happy spider thoughts of how he would have killed his prey, when something sharp tapped him. “Yeowch!”, he thought, and before he knew it, he was back on his log again. Just like that. He rubbed his eyes and thought it was all just a dream. That was my cousin, Billy, said my mum. We know of these tales in our wood. So always be aware of the tall-as-the-sky giants”.

Thinking about that story, invite students to think of Billy, the spider who was trapped by giants. Using the continuum for the final time, ask students to move after thinking about the following statement: “I would rather be observed, poked and prodded for a little time and then released than be killed and become part of a scientific collection”. As before, ask students about their decision. What has changed?

Once complete, invite students to sit back down again. Explain that the purpose of the last exercise was to give different perspectives of a situation by slowly adding more information.

Step 7.

Now show this example of cataloguing species. Ask if students have seen these before and if so, where? Tell students that when scientists take the whole animal, such as those shown in the picture within the linked article, they must ask for permission. Scientists must ask a special ethics group set up to make sure the animal does not suffer pain.

Step 8.

Ask students to go back to the continuum. Ask the initial question: "I agree with killing any species for scientific purposes if they do not suffer any pain". Afterwards, ask students if their new knowledge and understanding changed their viewpoint? Why/Why not?

Part C: The Role Of Ethics In Animal Care

Step 1.

Explain to students that this lesson has been on ethics. Invite students to suggest what they understand about ethics. Clarify student understanding by explaining that ethics is thinking about what is right and wrong, and who has the right to do what. What is considered ethical can change, depending on what information you have at hand. It is sometimes easier to make decisions with more information than without it. In this lesson, ethics is the moral reasoning that asks how and when you can take another's life, and if it's even right to take a life.

For nearly every place in our culture, there is a board of ethics. They come together and debate on situations, such as the decisions for entomologists and whether they can kill insects, ensure that the death is painless and whether the scientists can take the insects' bodies.

Step 2.

Invite those who want to participate in a role-play (18 students or thereabouts). Students not participating in the role play can take notes about their observations.

Note: In replacement of a role-play, students could complete this activity by drawing it as cartoon to explore the decision-making and moral reasoning behind killing a species.

The role-play is a 15-minute challenge. Split the students into groups. Assign each group with a different role listed below, ensuring that each role has been assigned once. Give each group their assigned role from the Role-play Group Descriptions and tell them they have seven minutes to think through how they are going to act out their role. Each group has a different role to play; other students should not see the roles of the other groups.

The groups are as follows:

Two groups of four students: Insects. These two groups should each represent a different species of insect that is eating freshly fallen leaves on the ground. They should be doing various insect-like tasks, such as communicating with each other, sheltering, feeding, etc. Students should pay attention to the other insects of their species (group).

One group of four students: Junior Entomologists. This group is fresh out of university and new to the job. As they go about their work in the forest, they discover the two insect species groups. They catch and release one of the species groups, taking notes and studying the insects. With the second group, the entomologists realise they have never seen them before and must decide as a group what to do with the new species. The entomologists must act out the decision-making process. What will they do? Whatever you do, it's important to remember they are going to have to report their findings at the end of their day of research in the forest. What would be better for the continued study of the new species- catch-and-release or kill and collect?

One group of four students: The Ethics Board. The Board know some entomologists are working in the field, discovering species. The instructions from the Board are that the entomologists can only kill if they are sure it is previously undiscovered, but they need to ask the Board for permission before killing any insects. There are strict guidelines in place to determine the steps taken if the entomologists do the wrong thing. Step one: are they given a warning? Step two: are they fined? Or, step three: do you send them to jail? It's crucial that the Board set a clear standard and live up to their responsibilities.

Notes for the Board:
- After entomologists have gone into the field, if they come to the Board to ask a question, the Board can answer with a decision.
- Should the entomologists return from the field and not check in with the Board, the Board can decide whether they want to ask the entomologists whether they have fulfilled their obligations.
- The Board will have to think through all of their options and discuss what their stance will be.

One group of two students: Senior Entomologists. This role ensures the junior entomologists are doing the right thing: are they cataloguing species, or are they using catch-and-release techniques? After the juniors return from their field trip, the seniors are quick to find out what the juniors discovered and how they did it.

Once students are in their groups and have practised their role, explain that you will be the narrator to set the scene. For example: "It was a hot January day, and the entomologists were itching to get outside of their office, and so they decided to go and search a new area of bush to see what they could find".

From here, it's over to the groups to act the scene and see what happens.

Tip: There is no right or wrong way of doing this. This activity is about moral decision-making and will be difficult for students.

Reflection

Invite students to work independently to reflect on how their thoughts changed when they were on the continuum. Students can respond to the following question (also available on the Student Worksheet):

Did you find that when you had more information that your decision changed?

Differentiated Learning

Extension: Invite students to debate the killing jar, looking at the pros and cons of cataloguing insects using this article: https://thebiologist.rsb.org.uk/biologist-features/158-biologist/features/1931-inside-the-killing-jar. For more information on the ten guidelines on animal ethics, look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal _ethics

Provisions for Learning Support: As a class, students can start to build a terminology wall for key terms using images and words to represent them.

Teacher Reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching practice today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

Backyard Bush Blitz - Exploring the Ethics of Entomology

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