BIOMES
IN THE UNITED STATES
Lesson Ideas
CLASS EXERCISE: Your team has been asked to develop a travel brochure for an upcoming trip. The trip travels from the Smokey Mountains to southern New Mexico, Southern California, central Wyoming and finally to northern Minnesota. The trip is designed to allow the travelers to experience a wide variety of environments. Your brochure should describe what each area is like by explaining the vegetation, animals, and climate.
APPROACHES: The teacher may use a variety of techniques to support the project and the reading required to complete the task.
Option 1: Divide the class into groups of five and assign each student a biome to research. The teacher may direct the students to create a clustered or unclustered web to collect information from the reading. The students will work as individuals to collect their information and then come back together to collaborate on the brochure.
Option 2: Divide the class into groups assigning each group a biome to research. The teacher may direct the students to create a clustered or unclustered web web to collect information from the reading. The students will work as a team to collect their information and create the clusters. Next, the class will jigsaw into brochure groups with each biome represented. The students will collaborate on the brochure.
Option 3: Use Option 1 or 2 and have the students use the "Biomes Chart" to support their data collection, as an alternative data collection tool.