Best Buddies

Summary

Students will identify and describe the relationship and develop a short skit to demonstrate one of the dependent relationships as it might be found in a human interaction.

Materials

• Pictures of animal pairs (attached) Color copies are best but black and white will do. Glue to cardstock and laminate for durability.
• Access to Internet or library reference materials (encyclopedia, wildlife books).
• Copies of student worksheet if desired.
• key to organisms

Background for Teachers

This activity uses pictures of pairs of organisms that have a relationship.
This can be a summary or introduction to relationships of organisms in a environment.

Instructional Procedures

1. Have students pair/share what it means to be a buddy. Then discuss the types of interactions plants and animals have in an ecosystem.
2. Define producer, consumer, decomposer, predator, prey, mutualism, commensalisms and parasitism with class or assign groups to find and explain definitions.
3. Explain to students that they will be passing around the pictures of pairs of organisms and they will need to decide what role each organism is playing in the relationship. If they have no idea, they should look it up in the resources available to them. They will work in groups of 3-4.
4. Each group does not need to do all the organisms. Groups may get "stuck" on a hard one and it will slow them down.
5. After about 25 minutes, stop the groups and go over the results. Each group should report on one or two pairs.
6. Assign partners to work on the next part. They need to pick from parasitism, commensalisms or mutualism and write a short skit that might take place between two humans that illustrates the relationship.
7. As students perform their skits, the class needs to guess which relationship they are displaying.

Assessment Plan

Scoring Guide:
1. Students complete definitions on student page……………………..4
2. Students accurately identify relationships between paired organisms*……4
3. Students design and perform skit based on a relationship………4
4. Student skit accurately portrays relationship intended…………..4

Bibliography

Lesson Design by Jordan School District Teachers and Staff.