This lesson should last an hour, but if you can a couple of lessons would be better.

It involves working outdoors for some of the time so ensure that you have an outdoor area, at school or nearby, where there will be no disruptions.

Students will have the opportunity to use various pieces of equipment, including a microscope, to find out more about local flora and fauna and to study a chosen species in detail and present their findings with diagrams rather than words.

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What You Will Need:

• Light microscopes or stereomicroscope (one per pair)

• Magnifying glasses (optional)

• Microscope slides or Petri dishes to place sample on and view under stereomicroscope

• Graticules/grids and 30cm rulers

• Scalpels (optional – for dissecting plants)

• Quadrats

• Calculators

• Beakers

• Recording sheet

• Pencils

• Pond-dipping equipment (optional, see ‘Alternatives’ section below)

• Variety of text books, entomology or plant guides for identifying species

Health and Safety:

Make sure students wear sun protection and a hat if working outdoors in the summer, and that they do not wander far from the school site.

Care must be taken when using quadrats (there is no need to throw them). If using light microscopes, warn pupils not to focus direct sunlight onto the mirror of the microscope.

Choose instead to use diffuse light from the sky. Follow any school or department risk assessment guidance on fieldwork or working out of doors.

Activity Instructions:

You may wish to begin by running through the basics of observing through the microscope (e.g. setting up, choosing the right magnification, using top lighting or the mirror).

• Ask students to work in groups of 3 or 4.

• Each student is given a recording sheet and pencil and each group is given a beaker, reference books and quadrat.

• Take the students outside, anywhere grassy with plant life and bugs.

• Ask the students to place the quadrat randomly on the grass (they can walk a certain number of steps and then drop it behind them).

• Each group records what they find in their quadrat: drawing and writing down the species found.

• Students can repeat the previous steps and using the reference books as a guide, record the species they find in two more quadrats. The location of where they drop the quadrat can vary: shady areas, near a tree, near the playground, in open spaces etc. Do they notice any differences in species numbers between locations?

• Each student is asked to choose something they like (flower, insect, leaf) to take back to the classroom to study further. Make sure the students do not pick any endangered/vulnerable species.

• Back in the classroom, students can dissect their plant species and use the microscope to study them closely.

• Any insects should not be killed, and should be kept in the beaker whilst pupils draw them. If using a stereomicroscope, and depending on the insect (if they do not move too quickly and are not observed for too long under the heat of the light), some can be placed on a Petri dish and viewed under the microscope. All insects can be released back ‘into the wild’ after the lesson.

• Make sure pupils in each group have the opportunity to look down the microscope at different species at some point during the lesson. Pupils should draw what they see, not what they’ve seen in textbooks.

• Flowers are ideal specimens, as you can incorporate elements of plant biology into the lesson: e.g. which part is the stamen etc.?

• The process of scale drawing can be introduced to the students (although this may take a whole lesson to perfect their technique). Using eyepiece graticules and rulers for large insects and plants, pupils should be able to measure the length of the actual organism, and translate this to their drawing. For example, if they are drawing a spider’s leg which is 1cm long, and they are going to magnify it 5x, their drawing should have the spider’s leg length at 5cm. But when drawing the scale bar if a 1cm bar is drawn, the figure at the side should be:

• It’s not easy to draw knowing that you have to make legs etc. a certain length. So it’s possible to work out the magnification of the drawing afterwards:

• Note: When using microscopes, the magnification power of the microscope is different, and must be given i.e. if the ocular lens magnifies at 10x and the objective lens is 40x, then the overall magnification power is 400x. The statement ‘viewed under the microscope at 400x’ should be given on the drawing. Or: Drawn length/Actual length (measured using the graticule under microscope and making sure units are the same when calculating) to give the total magnification of the drawing.

Discussion Points:

You can end by asking a few questions to the class. In science, and in general: 

• Why are practical skills important?

• Why do you need to be accurate and pay attention to detail?

• Why are diagrams useful?