Human Impact

We are staring off our science learning this year by exploring Human Impact. This relates to parts of the Waste in Our World unit (Grade 4), Plants unit (Grade 4), Wetlands unit (Grade 5) and Weather unit (Grade 5).  

We played a game that shows the human impact on the animal population. We pretended to be deer in a habitat (a pyloned area) and collect food (pieces of uncooked pasta). If we found enough food (5-10 pieces) in a year (60 sec), then we survived and had an offspring (a baby). If not, we died and moved out of the playing field. Here were some statistics that show how the population changed over time:

Collecting food!

In Year 4, we experimented to see what would happen to the deer population if humans moved in and took over some of their habitat by building a neighbourhood. We reduced the playing area and removed some of the food. Many deer weren't able to find enough food. We also talked about how humans may cut off access to different habitats and leave deer travelling through our neighbourhoods to find other food sources. 

Here were some student reflections from the experiment: 

"If there was more space, there would be more deer that would survive." ~ AM
"If we go in their territory, they won't have as much of a chance of surviving." ~ Olivia
"When we harmed the habitat of the deer, their food decreased and the deer didn't survive." ~ Alice
"The game was basically showing how when humans take over an area, the deer may need to walk many kilometers to reach enough food." ~ Charlie
"We played a game that showed that we shouldn't build in the middle of habitats because there won't be enough food." ~ KG
"What used to be one habitat is now smaller habitat areas."
"We could fix that problem by trying to find out where deer mostly are in forests and not build over their habitat. If the deer try to walk a long way to find enough food, if they can't find food in enough time, they might die. ~ AZ