Students build tracking plate boxes to monitor passing wildlife.
Student Goals: Students learn about local wildlife by making inferences based on clues.
Instructional Resources: Animal tracking boxes
Activities:
 | Students set out and monitor animal tracking boxes.
Track plates were used to identify small animals that returned to the project site. The track plates consist of a metal sheet that is coated with chalk on both ends. In the center of the plate is an approximately 8” by 8” square of Contact paper secured by masking tape. Critters cross the plate and chalk in search of the small amount of bait placed in the center of the Contact paper, leaving their prints on the adhesive paper. Because the metal plates were left out all winter, wood boxes were used to shield the plates from rain and other moisture thereby only permitting small animals to cross the plate. Plates and boxes were donated by the USDI Bureau of Land Management. |
Cross-curricular:
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Language Arts: Write about animal sighting, encounters, or how to react if there is an encounter. Write about the species and their needs, perhaps even discussing displacement from fire or other natural limiting factors. |
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Math: Collect data on observations and look for best ways to interpret the data. |
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Science: Research and study the species and their niche in your region. |
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Social Studies: Examine how the observed tracks connect to wildlife that may have (or had) a greater role in the local economy such as mice contributing to coyotes which were a threat to sheep, or were used for pelts. |
Multi-sensory- learner involvement & self assessment / Outcome:
| Create a wildlife tracking box or another way to identify what species pass through an area. |
Extensions:
| Have a wildlife biologist be a guest speaker. Tag birds, count salmon, identify species in the schoolyard, go bird watching... |