In this activity, students learn about ecosystem services by playing an outdoor BINGO game. Students will search for elements in nature that provide a specific ecosystem service listed on their BINGO card.
Students will learn that nature provides many benefits to humans, such as the oxygen from plants, shade from trees, or erosion prevention from root systems.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This activity is easy to implement and can be done indoors using digital images.
This is a great outdoor activity to help break the usual indoor routine.
Students will learn that nature plays a vital role in their everyday lives.
Additional Prerequisites
Teachers must print all of the Ecosystem Services BINGO cards.
There are ten different cards, with and without images for different ages or abilities.
Students will need to have something to write with.
Teachers may need to explain how to play BINGO.
Differentiation
Students can complete the activity individually, in pairs, or small groups.
Advanced students could make slide presentations about the state of the environment and how climate change is putting ecosystem services in danger.
After playing the game, students could enter their results into a teacher-created Google Form, and then the teacher could share the results in a spreadsheet so that students could see how their results compared with the rest of the class.
Other resources on this topic include this PBS video on the relationship between humans and the environment, this lesson on climate change and biodiversity, and this video on how nature can restore ecosystems.
Scientist Notes
This resource underscores the concept of ecosystem services, opportunities, and beneficial impacts on humans and the environment. This is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
LS1: From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes
MS-LS1-6 Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for the role of photosynthesis in the cycling of matter and flow of energy into and out of organisms.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
MS-LS2-3 Develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem.
MS-LS2-5 Evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services.
5-LS2-1 Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment.
