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Investigation Question 5:
What lives in the soil?
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What To Do
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Setting the
Scene
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To set the scene, bring in a soil sample that includes several earthworms and other visible organisms (including plant material such as roots). While students look at the new sample, tell them that their task will be to find clues that there are both living things and recently living things in the sample.
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Presenting the Investigation
question
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After the scene is set, introduce your students to the investigation question: “What lives in the soil?”
Tell your students that they will be investigating this question and that at the end of their investigations, they will be able to provide reliable answers.
Have your students brainstorm ideas about how this investigation question could be investigated.
- Design an experiment that could be used to test the investigation question.
- What materials would be needed?
- What would you have to do?
- What would be measured?
- How long would the experiment take?
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Assessing What Your Students Already Know
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Have students think about the material that floated on the top of the water when they separated soil in an earlier investigation. What did they notice when they observed the floating material? [It looked like pieces of wood, leaves, etc.]
Ask students to suggest the names of organisms that live in the soil. Plants will be the most obvious. Ask them if they have ever noticed other things growing in and moving around in the soil. What do they think animals moving in the soil would find to eat? Ask them if they think that the animals and plants that live in the soil are good or bad for the soil. [Students might think that insects and worms harm the plants growing there.]
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Exploring the Concept
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- Hand out a set of supplies to each student group. Ask them to label their foam trays as “Animal”, “Plant” and “Not Sure”.
- Cover each work table with newspapers, and place a mound of freshly dug soil from a mature garden or woodlot in the center of the table.
- Tell the students that they will have a certain amount of time (20 minutes or more, if possible) to examine the soil sample and remove traces or actual living things from the sample. As they take out each item, they should place the item on the foam tray on which they think the item belongs.
- Demonstrate by teasing out a bit of soil in which you find a bit of leaf material. Place it on the tray marked “Plant”. If living animals are present in the sample, students may place them directly on the animal tray, or the may capture them in the small plastic cups for temporary viewing.
- When students are finished investigating their soil samples, ask them to bring their findings to a front table and group the trays. Ask students to help each other to move “Not Sure” items to either the plant or animal trays. What category is represented by most of the material? [plants]
- On a journal page, ask students to describe the activity. Ask them to write down what features helped them to identify small bits of material as either plant or animal.
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