Wetland Works Activities: As the Duck Flies

As the Duck Flies

Purpose:

This activity is designed to increase the awareness for the need to protect our nation’s wetlands as a habitat for migrating waterfowl.

Objectives:

As a result of this activity, the student will:

1. Describe the act of migration.

2. Demonstrate the dependence of wetlands for migrating birds.

Materials:

Sidewalk chalk or a stick

yard stick or meter stick

TEKS: 3.1B 3.8A thru D 3.9A,B

Procedure:

1. Take the students to the parking lot or a sandy section of the playground. Draw a large hopscotch course. Each square should be at least 3’ x 3’ and there should be at least 10 squares. (This would be a good time to give the students a quick lesson in perimeter and area of a square.)

2. Have the students make believe that they are ducks that are going to fly south for the winter. They are going to fly from one end of the hopscotch course to the other. Each square is a wetland along their migration route. Every student will have the opportunity to "migrate" across the hopscotch course.

3. All students should be successful at the first migration. Now tell the students that someone wants to build a shopping center and you will need to destroy two of the wetlands in order to build it. Put an X on two of the squares. Allow the students to migrate again. They may not touch any of the squares that have an X in them. If they do, they will die.

4. After all of the students have had an opportunity to go through destroy two more wetlands and have the students "migrate" again.

5. Repeat this procedure until so many wetlands are destroyed that they are too far apart for the students to jump from one to another.

Questions:

1. Explain why some birds died earlier than others.

2. Why did the rest of the birds die?

3. Why did the birds die even though some of the wetlands remained at the end of the game?

4. Explain how this game represents migration.

5. Why is it important to save wetlands in all states?

6. How do migrating birds depend on wetlands during migration?

Footnote:

Taken from "Wetlands/Migration" by Stephen T. Ferguson; Williams/Cone, Topsham ME

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