VIRTUAL SCIENCE EDUCATION - MIDDLE SCHOOL RESOURCE
Welcome to the Virtual Science Education blog post. Today, we are going to focus on some Middle School resources to support these students as they continue to do and think about science while at home.
What’s the phenomenon? A weird looking beehive?!?
How often have you stopped to wonder - what’s inside of that?!? Yup, we’re going there. Let’s visit the insect world and one of our favorite pollinators - bees.
What can we learn by thinking about a bee hive? Quick answer - a TON!
using a phenomenon to think about structure and function
Why do bees even make a hive? We usually see them flying around flowers, buzzing around a hive or getting trapped somewhere like in between a window and a screen. When do they build a hive? What is it even made of? Do they all look the same or are the same color?
In the image on the right, the beekeeper forgot to put the frame in his hive, so the bees just free-styled, building a structure that would best maintain suitable living conditions for the colony (like temperature and ventilation). Should all hives look like this?!? How could we test this layout vs. the traditional? Who decided the traditional setup was the best? Is it the best for the bees or the easiest for the people building and managing them?
Looking at some pictures of bees, I noticed bees are pretty comfortable around each other, but I am afraid of getting stung. How come they all hang out together and don’t sting each other? What are they all doing? Who is organizing all of this?
At first glance, it appears that storing honey is the driving force for creating a hive, now, I’m not so sure. Does the social nature of a bee’s life play a role? Does the surrounding environment or food quality matter? There is a lot to think about and work on understanding to figure this out.
SUPPORTING STUDENTS AS THEY SHARE THEIR THINKING
To get started thinking about this hive and what the bees were doing and why, we put together some slides to get a conversation going. As students think about bees, they start to wonder about the connection between the structure and function of a hive and identify what we need to learn more about to start making sense of the complex work of bees.
We’re going to share both the PDF version and a Google Slides version so you can make changes as needed. Please share your experiences with students and give us feedback via email to ngssphenomena@gmail.com or via Twitter @ngssphenomena.
scaffolding student Thinking so they can dig deeper
How can we start to explain this? Especially because last time we checked - none of us are bees. Do bees have Feng shui? Are they trying to build something artistic? How does the structure of this hive connect to the function of it?
Wait - what are bees even trying to do? This looks like a lot of work - what’s the payoff?!?
Click on the image to the left to use this tool to build your scientific explanation.
Post written by Chris Zieminski and TJ McKenna for ngssphenomena.com
Comment below, or email ngssphenomena@gmail.com.
