Homework and Updating the Game

Tuesday, September 21st. Today we revisited the Food Web Connections Game in small groups and brainstormed ways to make the game better. Some groups decided to have specific ratios for how many producers are required before you can add primary consumers and so on up the food chain. Other groups added more specific details about what each species eats and how that limits your options when building a food web. Several groups decided to add "Disaster Cards" to the game. These included fires, floods, droughts, toxic spills and land development each with a different impact on the food webs. We will play our modified games on Friday.
Monday we revisited our homework from the previous week. We went over expectations for what constitutes a "good" answer and how it is important to give detailed answers in full sentences. I gave the phrase, "When in doubt, write it out" to remind them to always add more details instead of less. Often they assume that I know that they know what they are talking about, but they need to be explicit so that everyone is clear on the details. Many of them got their homework back with comments to guide them in redoing their work. We will be having a quiz on Thursday that will cover the same topics that were addressed in the readings and homework. These include drawing a food web, describing how energy and matter move through a food web and the role of decomposers in the food web. No Homework.