Operation Everglades Rescue: Investigating Florida’s Plants and Animals & Their Habitats

Fourth Grade Florida Studies

Science Mini-Unit

Providing Extension Activities for:

The Last Egret

By Harvey E. Oyer III

Correlated to:

Florida’s Next Generation Sunshine State Standards

Division of Mathematics and Science

Miami-Dade County Public Schools

Teacher’s Name: Date:

Science Mini- Unit: The Last Egret

Fourth Grade

  1. Title: Operation Everglades Rescue: Investigating Florida’s Plants and Animals & Their Habitats
  2. Lesson Objectives:

Standards – Next Generation Sunshine State Standards for Science

Fourth Grade NGSSS

  • SC.4.L.16.2 Explain that although characteristics of plants and animals are inherited, some characteristics can be affected by the environment.
  • SC.4.L.16.3 Recognize that animal behaviors may be shaped by heredity and learning.
  • SC.4.L.17.2 Explain that animals, including humans, cannot make their own food and that when animals eat plants or other animals, the energy stored in the food source is passed on to them.
  • SC.4.L.17.4 Recognize ways plants and animals, including humans, can impact the environment.
  1. Investigations

Investigation One: South Florida Water: Supply and Demand

Investigation Two: Observing Florida’s Ecosystems: Habitat Sweet Habitat

Investigation Three: Pass the Energy Please!

Investigation Four: Endangered Species “Wanted – Alive”

  1. Steps to Deliver the Lesson

Introduction:

After reading and discussing the book The Adventures of Charlie Pierce: The Last Egret by Harvey E. Oyer III, have students read, discuss and respond to the Introduction for the Science Mini-Unit: The Last Egret handout.

Materials needed for Introduction:

  • Student Sheet: Introduction to Mini-unit: The Last Egret

Investigation One: South Florida Water: Supply and Demand

Adapted from

Materials needed for Investigation:

  • One or more pieces of limestone
  • Map of South Florida (Appendix 1.1)
  • Student Sheet (Appendix 1.2) can be copied back to back with Appendix 1.1
  • Two large identical sponges (preferably 8-10” long and 2” thick)
  • Container of water
  • Paper Towelsfor clean up
  • Two pans to hold water, pan 1 labeled “Historic Everglades” and pan 2 labeled “EvergladesToday” (Appendix 1.3)
  • Two ID cards labeled “Historic Everglades” and “Everglades Today” (Appendix A 1.3)
  • Four ID cards labeled: “Farmer,” “Developer,” “Population of South Florida,” and“Everglades.”(Appendix 1.3)
  • Two additional containers to hold water
  • Masking Tape

Lesson Objective:

  • Students will investigate that freshwater in the Everglades of South Florida is not unlimited.
  • Students will understand that the water South Floridians use in all aspects of their lives comes from the Everglades.
  • Students will recognize ways humans impact the environment and identify the problems that humans are creating due to the misuse of water.

Background Information for Teachers:

  • The Everglades depends on water from rainfall and drainage from the Kissimmee River Basin and Lake Okeechobee. Before people settled in South Florida, the water that spilled over the lake’s southern edge flowed southward through the Everglades. In the late 1800’s, people began to build canals and levees to control this water flow for human needs. Now the Everglades compete with humans for water. In times of drought, it does not receive enough water through the flood gates. In times of extreme moisture, it receives the excess. Also, the water the Everglades receive has been altered (polluted) before it gets here.

Suggested Procedure:

  1. The day before the activity, explain to your students how the Everglades are supplied with water. Remind students that limestone is the porous, sedimentary rock you see in the Everglades and can be found in our own “backyards”. These rocks are made of calcium and contain fossils of sea life, evidence of ancient seas that once covered the area. The limestone aquifer under the Everglades acts as the principal water recharge area for all of South Florida. Take students out to the schoolyard to find a piece of limestone and/or ask them to find one at home. Display the piece of limestone for student observation, while explaining its water-bearing capabilities. You may use the informational text “Geology” from The South Florida National Parks Activity Guide for Teachers to enhance students’ understanding regarding the natural water flow of the Everglades and the role of limestone. Just click on the following link: Geology, Hydrology, Habitats, Fire, Hurricanes & Native Peoples or see the technology link below.
  2. Use the map of South Florida (Appendix 1.1) to review the concept of the original water flow from the Kissimmee River basin, to Lake Okeechobee, through the Everglades, into the Gulf of Mexico, and on to the coral reefs or the Dry Tortugas. Compare this to the altered water flow due to humans.Students complete #1 and #2 of the student worksheet.
  3. Appoint four volunteers to represent “the Everglades,” “farming interests,” “developers,” and “the human population of South Florida.” Identify each volunteer with a name tag using the already made ID labels (Appendix1.2)
  4. Pour water into an extra container. Completely saturate one sponge with water and place it into the pan you have labeled “Historic Everglades.” This sponge represents the original, unaltered Everglades during the summer wet season. It has received an uninterrupted flow of water. Ask the students where the water originates.
  5. Ask the “Everglades” volunteer to squeeze the sponge over the pan to show how much water the Everglades can hold. Put the sponge back in the water.

6. Immerse the second sponge in the extra container of water until it is saturated.

7. Ask the students how the water flow has been changed by people and for what purposes is the water diverted away from the Everglades. Tell students that they are going to take water from the Everglades, just as people do.

8. Let the farmer give one squeeze to the sponge from pan 2 (“Everglades Today”), allowing some of the water to squeeze out into another container. Pass the sponge to the developer to let him/hersqueeze. What do they do with the water? (They divert it, or drain it into the ocean to make the landdry enough for planting and building.) Students complete #3 of the student worksheet.

9. Pass the sponge to the “population of South Florida” for a squeeze into the sink. Ask: What do peopleusethe water for? Students complete #4 of the student worksheet.

10. Explain that some of the water that these groups use is only “borrowed.” However, when theyreturn it to the hydrologic system, it is not always in the same condition that it was when they removed it. It may also be put back in a different place than where it originated. Ask the students if they can think of some specific examples of how the water is affected and/or diverted (nutrients orfertilizers added by farmers, from residential areas and flushed into the ocean to prevent flooding, run off from roads, and lawns treated with pesticides and fertilizers). Students complete #5 from the student worksheet.

11. Let the “Everglades” get the last squeeze from the sponge from pan 2 (“Everglades Today”). Theremaining water squeezed from the sponge into the second empty pan represents the water left for the Everglades after humans have diverted much of the water for their own use.

12. Go back to the first pan labeled “Historic Everglades” and squeeze the sponge again in its own pan. Now squeeze the sponge in the pan labeled “Everglades Today.” Compare the two. What is left forthe Everglades?

Technology Integration:

  • Natural History Background Information:
    Geology, Hydrology, Habitats, Fire, Hurricanes & Native Peoples

Suggested Student Evaluations:

  • Ask the students: What effect does reduced water use have on the Everglades’ plants and animals?
  • Ask the students to list where the Everglades gets its water, name three other competitors for that water, list three ways to conserve water, and explain how water coming into the Everglades has been changed.

Investigation Two: Observing Florida’s Ecosystems: Habitat Sweet Habitat (Three Days)

Adapted from

Materials needed for Investigation:

  • Investigation Two lesson plan opened electronically on a computer with internet access so that web sites and hyperlinks can be accessed and shown on a digital projector to the class.
  • Student notebook or journal
  • South Florida/Everglades plant and animal picture cards

Lesson Objectives:

  • The student will research at least four Everglades/South Florida habitats and be able to identify two animals and one plant that live in each habitat.
  • The student will recognize how each habitat provides the necessary resources (food, water, shelter, and personal space) so that its plants and animals can survive.
  • The student will compare and contrast the differences between the habitat types and the different organisms that live in each.

Background Information for Teachers:

  • South Florida/Everglades ecosystem is a collection of habitat types. The random formation of the limestone foundation in the Everglades determines where a certain habitat is found. Therefore pockets and islands of different habitats are scattered throughout. The water level and water availability determine the vegetation of a particular habitat, and this in turn determines the wildlife found there. For more teacher background information on the specific habitats see the following site:

Suggested Procedure:

  1. Pass out the student sheet Habitat Sweet Habitat. Ask students to study the “habitat sweet habitat” house illustration and share what they see. Ask them to compare this house to their home and explain how they are alike.
  2. Say every living thing needs a habitat. Then ask: what is a habitat and have students define it. (A habitat is a home for plants and animals.) Discuss what they and all living things need to stay alive. Then ask what resourcea habitat needs to provide. (These four resources: food, water, shelter,andspace are the traits of a successful and healthy habitat for the plants and animals.)
  3. Show a video about the Everglades. Have students watch the video to identify different habitats in the Everglades and the plants and animals living in them. Students can take notes. See the technology Integration resource choices below. If you are a Title one school you have access to the Discovery video. If not, try the other choices.Discuss what the students saw in the video. Say the Everglades has many habitats. We’ll focus on these four: Sawgrass Marsh, Freshwater Slough, Pine Rocklands, and Hardwood Hammocks.
  1. Each of the habitats listed below are hyperlinks that will take you to kid friendly reading passages that present information and photographs describing the each habitat. Just click on the hyperlinked habitat’s name. Have students take notes identifying the characteristics that makeeach habitat different from the others. Students should also include plants and animals that live in each habitat.

Sawgrass Prairie/Marsh

•Wet Habitat

•Sawgrass, not grass, but a sedge

•Named for tiny sharp saw-like teeth attached to the leaf blade.

•Water is about two feet deep in wet season

•During dry season small pools of water trap thousands of fish that provide food for birds

•birds: ibis, anhinga, heron, wood stork,

•periphyton, a blue-green algae provides a microhabitat for insects, and tiny fish

Freshwater Slough

•Slow moving river

•Holds deepest water all year - two to four feet deep

•Animal population increases during the Everglades Dry Season (November-May)

•Plants: Water lilies, giant reed, pond apple tree

•Wading birds: Anhinga, Wood stork, ibis

•Fish: gambusia, Florida gar, bass

•Reptiles: alligator, turtles

•Invertebrates: Apple snails

Pine Rocklands

•Driest habitat

•Above sea level elevations

•Porous oolite limestone bedrock

•Slash pine has thick bark, high branches & needle like leaves

•Thick bark = microhabitat for beetles, scorpions

•Fire is essential for the survival of the pine rocklands

•Fire removes competing plants/trees that are shading the new pine seedlings

•Fire tolerant plants: cabbage palms, saw palmettos

•Animals: scorpions, mice, rabbits, raccoons, panthers, deer, foxes,

•woodpeckers, owls, and songbirds

Hardwood Hammock

•Broad- leafedhardwood tree forest

•highest elevated land

•Dark, shady, moist habitat

•Soft and spongy ground cover from fallen leaves home to many decomposers

•Trees: Royal Palm, Gumbo Limbo, Live Oak, Strangler Fig, & Lysiloma or “ tree snail tree”

•Animals: Zebra butterfly, tree snails, panthers, raccoons, mice, rabbits, lizards, snakes, song birds

•Symbiotic relationships:

- Commensalism: hardwood trees & air plants or epiphytes

- Mutualism: lichens - algae & fungus relationship

•Sensitive to pollution

  1. Have students help make the South Florida/Everglades plant and animal cards. Students can color and cut up the Supplementary South Florida animal and plant pictures found in the technology link. In addition students draw their own and/or find pictures to print from online.
  1. Identify four centers in the classroom that will represent the four habitats studied. You can use bulletin board/wall space, or containers (boxes or bags) to represent the habitats. Each center should be clearly marked and decorated with its habitats’ characteristics. (Students can help.)
  1. Divide the class into two groups to play the game Habitat Sweet Habitat. Line up each group in a single file. The lines should be next to each other with the leader of each facing the habitat centers. (relay race style) Each group’s stack of cards can be marked to identify each group’s accuracy.
  1. Between the students and centers, place a stack of (or scatter) the habitat cards.
  1. The first student in each line will, upon signal, run to the cards, pick one up, and place it in its appropriate habitat (center). The student then runs back to his/her line and tags the next person who will run and select another card. This continues until all the cards have been placed.
  1. Once the groups have finished review the contents of each habitat center. Students can use their notes.
  1. Discuss why certain organisms cannot survive in a particular habitat (wrongly placed cards).

Technology Integration:

  • Everglades video from Discovery:
  • Everglades Royal Field Trip video:
  • Everglades Conservation video:
  • Direct link to habitat descriptions:
  • South Florida/Everglades plant and animal picture cards pgs 197-213:

Suggested Student Evaluation: Discuss the following questions with the students:

  • What makes habitats different (i.e. water levels and availability, elevation, types of plants, types of animals, etc.)?
  • Do some animals depend on more than one habitat?
  • Are all different habitats necessary?
  • Why do certain plants and animals need a particular habitat?

Suggested Extension: Take the class on a schoolyard habitat observation walk. Have students keep a list of plants and animals they encounter. Students can draw illustrations and/or take pictures. Students compare plants and animals found in the schoolyard to those found in the Everglades habitats studied.

Investigation Three: Pass the Energy Please!

Materials needed for Investigation:

  • small paper plate – represent the sun
  • yarn- connect the organisms
  • tape
  • scissors
  • crayons/markers
  • Florida animal and plant pictures (Appendix 4.1)

Lesson Objective:

  • Students will describe and/or explain how energy is transferred through a food chain by creating a model of a Florida Everglades food chain.

Background Information for Teachers:

  • A food chain is the path by which energy passes from one living thing to another.
  • Producers make their own food.
  • Consumers cannot make their own food. They eat other organisms to get energy.
  • There are three types of consumers: herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores

Suggested Procedure:

  1. Placeeach of the common Florida food chain cards and a paper plate representing the sun (Appendices 3.1-3.6) on blue trays to create the Florida Animal & Plant Pictures Stations. These stations/ trays will rotate round the classroom, not the students.
  1. Ask the students to cut and arrange the plants and animals in order of an Everglades Food Chain. In their journals, the students will diagram each of the different Florida Everglades food chains.
  2. On the final rotation the students will, in addition to diagramming in the journal, use materials listed (small paper plate – represent the sun, yarn- connect the organisms, tape, scissors, crayons/markers, Florida animal and plant pictures) to create a food chain model. The food chain should begin with the sun and continue with the producers and consumers. They should be linked with the yarn.
  1. Upon completing the food chain, each group will present to the class their food chain and explain each organism’s role.
  1. As a follow up assignment the students can complete the What’s My Role worksheet (Appendix 3.7). Students will classify Florida animals and plants into the following categories: producers and consumers(herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores).

Technology Integration: