Bio-Diversity in Bio-Diversity in HomewoodHomewood

Citizenship Criteria

• Improving research skills

Role

• You are the Environmental Protection Officer for Homewood School

• In your pair come up with ideas to protect the school environment

Task• Mr. Adam wants a detailed report on the trees in

Homewood. You will go to the woods and carry out a survey of all the trees

• You will record the tree types and produce a short report with graphs on the types of trees we have

• You will comment on

how we use the

woods

Method• You will be given a laminated A3 sheet

with hints on identifying the common tree types

• You need a tape measure,

your tally charts, the

laminated sheet and

a pencil

• Complete the following table as a tally

Tree types in HomewoodAlder Beech Birch Elm Fir

Lime Oak Plane Sweet Chestnut Other

Tree size

• You also need to record data on the size of tree trunks and the length of leaves, use the following two tables to record those data

Leaf data

• Measure the lengths of any oak, beech or sweet chestnut leaves you find

Oak Beech Sweet Chestnut

Survey time

• Now go with your teacher to carry out your survey

• If you cannot identify the tree in the field then bring a leaf back and we will try to identify it in the classroom

What did you find?

• Identification of trees is difficult, here is some help. Log on to the internet and try this link, you will need a leaf from the tree you want to identify

• http://www-saps.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/trees/

Results

• Write down your method (what you did). You need to write it in a way so that somebody else can go and do exactly the same survey

• Make a neat table of your results

Graphs

• You need to make some graphs of your results, consider

• Bar graphs: these will show how many examples of each type of tree there are

• Pie Graph: this will show the proportions of trees there are

Conclusion

• This is an important part of the report. You must make a concluding comment about the woods and your survey for Mr. Adam

Final Questions

• Do we need to do more to look after the woods?

• Should we consider ways to get more students using the woods (would this be safe)?

• Should we add more woods?

• Should we cut them down for buildings or playing fields?