Biomes & Animal Habitats Bundle

lesson overview

Biomes & Animal Habitats Bundle
Go in-depth in your students' understanding of biomes and animal habitats while sharpening their problem-solving and engineering design skills. This bundle includes task cards to use the engineering design process to solve problems in each of 8 biomes (temperate forest, rainforest, tundra, taiga, ocean, freshwater, desert, and grassland). Then apply their knowledge by diving into a long-term animal habitat project where students build a diorama to represent the habitat of an animal.

This bundle includes the following:

1. Animal Habitat & Biomes STEM Diorama Engineering Design Project
This hands-on project is an engaging design challenge that allows students to learn how to do research, apply the engineering design process, and connect to a real-world STEM career. Included are handouts and editable slides to teach about biomes, ecosystems, and habitats. The editable slides cover the biomes (temperate forest, rainforest, tundra, taiga, desert, freshwater, ocean, and grassland), what plants and animals live in each one, and some adaptations associated with the wildlife in that biome. Also included are 48 game cards to be used for reviewing biomes with a game of Memory, or other options.

Engineering Challenge: Students will construct a diorama of an animal habitat after researching their chosen animal. The habitat must also incorporate a design constraint such that their animal must be able to move in and out of their shelter without the student touching it with their hands.

STEM Career Connection: This project connects to the career of wildlife biology and its role in protecting and conserving animal habitats.

As with many STEM activities, this challenge can be tailored to students of various skill levels and abilities.

Included in this product:

• Detailed teachers guide with links to resources

• Photos of student examples

• Student handouts to guide them through the design process

• Editable slides about biomes

• STEM Career Connection on wildlife biology

• Memory game to review biomes

• Student recording sheets for research and preparing a presentation

Recommended Materials:

• Scissors

• tape

• Shoebox

• Moss, rocks, and plastic greenery

• construction paper

• Plastic animals (optional)

2. Building Brick Biome & Animal Habitat STEM Challenge Cards
Your students are terrestrial ecologists working to investigate and conserve animal habitats. They must first build a landscape of a biome (temperate forest, rainforest, freshwater, ocean, grasslands, desert, tundra, or taiga). Then they will use the engineering design process to solve a problem from one of the 64 included challenge cards. Can they make a trap to catch poachers? Can they help an okapi reach its food, or build a shelter to protect an animal from its predator? There is much to learn about biomes and animal habitats while constructing design solutions!

Click here for an editable STEM journal to use with distance learning, including digital and printable versions.

This packet also includes handouts for students to learn about biomes, ecosystems, and habitats, a STEM career connection about terrestrial ecologists, and a worksheet to walk students through the engineering design process. Assign your students one of the 64 challenge or task cards and teach them to use the engineering design process to think through their design before building their solutions.

This activity works well as an introduction to the engineering design process, an in-class or virtual lesson, or in centers or a makerspace.

Materials needed:

• Building bricks

• Paper plates or building brick base plates

• Construction paper (optional)

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Looking for more STEM lessons? Find the Vivify resource guide here: bit.ly/VivifyResourceGuide

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