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Collection of Lesson Plan

Predator and Prey: Can predators and prey interact with each other?

Subject taught
- Biology

Language Skills Developed
- Interaction
- Listening
- Reading
- Speaking

Transferable/Scientific Skills Developed
Students will develop
self-motivation,
analytical skills,
critical thinking skills,
problem-solving skills.

Students will expand topic related vocabulary and improve their skills of describing graphs and diagrams. They will analyse the predator-prey cycle and will learn to explain how the number of individuals in a prey-predator cycle varies depending on each other

Description
1. The activity is a digital and interactive matching activity on the content of predator and prey. It is a matching exercise between terms and relevant definitions. The students will receive immediate feedback from the platform
2. This interactive word wheel allows the students to spin the wheel. They then have to think about and say a sentence using the word the wheel stops at.
3. Students will explore the prey/predator interactions by themselves and thus have a first hand learning experience, which is memorable. In order for the students to take advantage of this experience the teacher should organise a class discussion to highlight the advantages of simulations and to clear up any confusion before students embark on the simulation.
4. The teaching resource allows students to understand the predator and prey cyclic interaction in a short time. Analysing the data of the mutual dependence of prey and predator presented on a chart, is also a very helpful tool to improve graph analysing and describing skills.

General aims
Students will learn basic English skills and some biology terminology of several keywords:
ECOSYSTEM
INTER-RELATED
INTERDEPENDENT
ORGANISMS
ENVIRONMENT
RELATIONSHIPS
The students will learn that an ecosystem is a complex network or web of interrelated and interdependent animals and plants within a common environment. Many organisms in the environment rely on other organisms for food.The feeding relationships between organisms can be shown in simple diagrams called Food Chains
Food webs show a more complex series of food chains with common links
The video aims to add more depth to previous studies of feeding relationships.
Students should expand their ability to transpose the ideas in the video into thoughts and then spoken interpretations of the words.
For the biological sciences, students should have more knowledge of feeding relationships and should have more keywords for ecology at more senior study levels.
This could be used in one class period but is reusable for homework and for practice purposes.
The random wheel is also available as a printable pdf that could be used to 'tick off' words as the student learns them and masters sentences containing the words.
Students will be able to perceive how changes in parameters (like birth rate) can affect predator/prey interactions and observe how predator/prey populations change over time. Students explore these types of relationships while learning about the competitive exclusion principle, predator-prey cycles. Students establish an ecosystem where all of the elements are in “balance” and no individual species dies off.
They will acquire the basic English vocabulary connected with the topic (predator/prey interactions).
The teaching resource should be presented to students after analysing the characteristics of the predator and the prey. Working individually, students draw a graph that depicts the actual change in the populations of the selected prey and predator, then, in pairs, compare the graphs and discuss.

Linguistic aims
Students will be able to:
- read English texts with ease
- reflect on their reading experience and share it with their peers
- get the main ideas from a text
- comprehend the topic correctly
- translate words connected with the topic (greenhouse effect) from English into their mother tongue.
Subject specific aims
students will be able to:
- explain the phenomenon, its causes and effects
- provide solutions to related problems in their context
- act pro-socially and prevent the phenomenon

Target group age
14-18

Level of competence in English (CEFR)
B1, B1+

Different phases to complete the lesson plan
Describing and comparing data presented in the graphs

Possible difficulties for the students
This topic is not particularly difficult for students as many of them will naturally be interested in the world of animals.
Lack of vocabulary


Difficulties related to the interdisciplinarity of the lesson plan (if this is the case)
students do not gain practical laboratory skills.

Teaching Resources (created)

Teaching Resources (reviewed)

Related Video Lessons

Predator and Prey