Our overall goal for using carnivorous plants in the classroom is to get students interested in biology by first engaging them in the world of carnivorous plants, which is an easy thing to do. While learning about the carnivorous plants one can introduce the students to broader biological topics such as convergent evolution, adaptation, and nitrogen cycling. To do this a few items were created to accompany the terrarium.
We created a 28" X 14" poster (Fig. 1) to accompany the terrariums. The poster has a legend to the plants in the tank and general information about carnivorous plants. You can download the poster below. There is also a blurb about convergent evolution of pitcher plants. Much of the content on the poster was taken from the North American Carnivorous Plant Fact Sheet (http://hua.huh.harvard.edu/FNA/Outreach/FNAfs_carnivory.pdf), which was developed by Claire Hemingway while working for Flora of North America (FNA) at the Missouri Botanical Garden. We made this poster using Adobe Illustrator. You can download (below) and modify the Adobe Illustrator version (.ai) as you please, but be sure to give us proper credit and you may not use the poster for monetary gain.
Fig. 1. Poster to
accompany terrarium.
To create
an anticipatory mood of excitement and to lure students into the
classroom, we created a second attention-grabbing flier (Fig. 2)
that we have placed on the doors of the classrooms containing the
terrariums.
Fig. 2. Attention-grabbing
flier for classroom door.
There are
many ways to incorporate carnivorous plants directly into your
lessons. This is the fun part. For example, students could be
involved in researching the plant's habitats and then determining
the appropriate conditions for the terrariums. I have developed a
worksheet that covers a number of topics (download below) and that
the students may be able answer with the poster and some basic
biology background.
The students get excited about the plants and seem to be genuinely
interested.
Download poster (Fig. 1) in pdf format (3.2 MB).
Download poster (Fig. 1) in Adobe Illustrator (.ai) format (3.6 MB). You may need to right-click and choose to download this file.
Download flier (Fig. 2) in pdf format (1.8 MB).
Download worksheet in pdf format (36 KB).
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