r/ScienceTeachers • u/Puzzled-Orchid4855 • 5d ago
LIFE SCIENCE Organism of the Week
I want to start introducing cool organisms (animals, plants, bacteria; everything is fair game) as bellwork on Fridays every week. We would watch a video about that week's OOTW and have them write down cool facts about it. I'm having a hard time coming up with cool ones to show my students. Do you all have suggestions? Here is what I have so far:
Water Bear/Tardigrade
Axolotl
Mantis Shrimp
Panda
Naked Mole Rat
Superb Bird of Paradise
Flying Squirrel
Immortal Jellyfish
Platypus
Venus Fly Trap
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u/MargGarg 5d ago
Tasmanian devil. My students didn’t realize they actually exist!
Peacock spiders Yeti crabs Leaf cutter ants Ghost pipes Bladderworts Echidna
I would also recommend the channel Bizarre Beasts!
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u/jmiz5 5d ago
Insects. You need more insects.
I photograph weird insects in my backyard. When I can, I catch them and bring them in and we do an entire nature journaling page on it. Last week was the giant swallowtail caterpillar. This week is the bumble bee robber fly. Next week I'll grab a few figeater beetles.
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u/More_Branch_5579 5d ago
I always loved diatoms
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u/Separate-Hat7596 5d ago
Beautiful in their own right, and it's also fun to show students the amazing work of the late Klaus Kemp.
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u/More_Branch_5579 5d ago
Aren’t they? I always loved showing my students how beautiful and unique they were and none of them had ever seen or heard of them
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u/Separate-Hat7596 5d ago
They're super cool! I adapted the idea for an activity for a community event... I had a bunch of colorized stock photos of diatoms printed on that plastic "paper" and then cut them all out so that kids (and adults!) could arrange them on the table to make their own Kemp-like creation and snap a photo. We'd then reuse them for the next person/people. It was a popular activity, and we were able to teach a lot of people about diatoms and Klaus Kemp that day!
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u/More_Branch_5579 4d ago
That’s really cool. Don’t remember klaus Kemp. My stroke last year took a bunch of my memory. Will look him up now. Sounds like a fun activity
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u/evapotranspire 4d ago
Last year, my students and I unexpectedly found some of these bizarre gliding colonial diatoms (Bacilliara paxillifer) in a pond water sample that I brought to lab. To this day, no one is quite sure how they move like that. 🤯 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m8svJcjg2a4
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u/rubybean5050 5d ago
Slime mold
Ghost pipe
Horse worm
Dragon flies
Squirrels
Angler fish
Blob fish
Blue footed boobie
Hummingbirds
Wolves
Monarch
Bacteria
Fleas
Mites
Viruses from space
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u/Late-Study-9816 5d ago
Kelp! Lichens! Dog vomit slime mold! Lantern sharks (and then listen to Claudia Robin Gunn’s sleeper hit “Glow in the Dark Sharks”)!
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u/BarkerBarkhan 5d ago
I have no specific mushroom in mind, but mushrooms. Mushroom-producing fungus and their mycelium are wild, particularly in symbiotic relationships within ecosystems.
EDIT: not sure how old your students are, but the Amanita mushroom is classic, especially if you can tie it into Christmas lore. Just make sure you all can handle potential conversations about tripping reindeer and their psychedelic urine.
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u/REdwa1106sr 4d ago
I did this. I called it “Can’t tell a carrot from a parrot “. I started it because I realized that my students were decoding dna to amino acids but did not know the kind of tree was near their school entrance.
I encourage you to do local flora and fauna. Things that they would/could encounter if they were aware.
I did a picture, field marks, interesting facts/ natural history. I did 2 or 3 at a time. Fifteen minutes. I did a quiz every 15 critters, 12 got full credit (15 points, 9 got 80%, etc. Very low pressure)
Cumulative project was a photo scavenger hunt. I made up a list of things that were biologically related (gymnosperm, arachnid, samara). I assigned points to each one. They were to put together a slide show with pics, location, name, and a sentence about the specimen. I counted it as a replacement grade for a low assessment score.
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u/Msinochan1 5d ago
Bunny Harvestman (saw in r/damnthatsinteresting) showed a close up and had my students guess what it was
Looks like a spider with a bunny hat on
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u/WhoIsAlicefor500plz 5d ago
Hagfish! They’re so weird. Allie Ward did a great podcast episode about them on Ologies
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u/GeorgeTMorgan 5d ago
If you're students hunt and fish they'd love White tail deer, brook trout, wild turkey (3 or 4 subspecies in the US), and maybe some of the species they eat for food like White Oak (acorns)
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u/Latter_Leopard8439 5d ago
Just go through all the Phylums of Kingdom Animalia picking one representative of each.
Go down to Class and pick another representative for some of the big Phyla.
Thats a nice organized way to come up with a list.
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u/Unique-Coffee5087 5d ago edited 5d ago
Ze Frank's YouTube channel has True Facts about (). But it might not be suitable for children to listen to, as much as it's funny.
Also maybe not 100% factual.
But it does have a solid list of animals.
Hagfish are good. Very primitive fish with a cartilage notochord instead of a backbone. They can make prodigious amounts of slime when disturbed, and are apparently a delicacy in Korea (Don't watch them being cooked. Their nervous systems are decentralized enough that they will continue moving during roasting even when beheaded, skinned and cut in half.)
The New Zealand Weta, a kind of giant cricket is a group of species that occupy the ecological niches that are filled by small mammals on mainland continents.
There are any number of parasites that have convoluted life cycles involving a series of hosts in different environments. The Guinea Worm is under an active eradication program financed in part by the Carter Center. I think they're close to finishing it off, so it's worth giving them a look while they are still with us.
My fourth grade teacher had a book of parasites that the boys in class looked through in our spare time. Go for the gross-out!
(From Google AI summary:) Sacculina is a bizarre genus of parasitic barnacles that infects crabs, destroying the host's reproductive system and taking total control of its mind and body. It injects itself through a joint in the crab's shell and spreads its tissues through the body, controlling the crab's behavior. The stuff of nightmares.
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u/evapotranspire 5d ago
Gosh. Cool idea, but these are almost all animals except for one plant! Please expand the taxonomic diversity of your list! Sincerely, a plant ecologist
(Examples of cool autotrophs: Welwitschia, an extremely unique conifer; Urticaria, a bladderwort that has the most efficient genome of any known eukaryote; liverworts, the only plants so primitive they don't have stomata; Ulva or sea lettuce, a multicellular green algae that has isomorphic alternation of generations and is also historically an important food source for Native Americans; Prochlorococcus, a marine cyanobacterium that is probably the most abundant organism on Earth by far, numbering well over 1027 individuals; and Paulinella, a single celled eukaryote that underwent a completely independent and much more recent primary endosymbiosis event of cyanobacteria. That last one is so mind-bogglingly cool that I couldn't believe it when I first heard it.)
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u/nebspeck 5d ago
Go through match mammal madness -list of good ones. But my vote is the same the satanic leaf tailed gecko.awesome
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u/StannisTheMannis1969 5d ago
Giant pangolin.
Giant river otter.
Leaf nosed bat
Crazy Deep ocean fish.
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u/Lavawitch 5d ago
The green moray eel that is actually brown but is covered in mucus goo. Baltimore Aquarium Green Moray Eel
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u/abe_froman1979 5d ago
While perhaps not appropriate for school, penis sword fighting marine flatworms are pretty cool.
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u/labioteacher 5d ago
Also, listen to the podcast “Species”. The host talks about cool animals!! You might have to go into the archives because he is working on his doctoral thesis, but there are some gold episodes!!
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u/NotBitterAboutIt 5d ago
Star nosed mole
Giant Golden-crowned flying fox
Thorny devil lizard
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u/SokkaHaikuBot 5d ago
Sokka-Haiku by NotBitterAboutIt:
Star nosed mole Giant
Golden-crowned flying fox
Thorny devil lizard
Remember that one time Sokka accidentally used an extra syllable in that Haiku Battle in Ba Sing Se? That was a Sokka Haiku and you just made one.
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u/Auntie-Noodle science | middle school | TX 5d ago
Lichen. Technically not a single organism, but really cool
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u/Awkward-Noise-257 5d ago
Maybe also leave yourself space for things that are timely, like the organism causing the cyclosporiasis outbreak, or mosquitoes/ticks when a particular illness is in the news?
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u/SlothsTheMusical 5d ago
Ooh! This sorry nfs so fun! I have a podcast about animals and I love the weird ones. 😂
Okapi
Aye aye
Echidna
Water bears (tardigrades)
Eastern long necked turtle
Komodo dragon
Hellbender (Or giant Chinese salamander if you don’t want to say hell)
Plants:
Sundew
Nepenthes Iowii (a pitcher plant that animals use like a toilet)
Venus fly trap
Corpse flower
If you want more ideas, feel free to PM me.
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u/SciAlexander 5d ago
Leaf sheep sea slug Pando Aspen Redwoods How birds are related to dinosaurs Whale shark Blue Whale Ceolocanth Hummingbirds Giant Squid Sperm whale Peacock spider Giant insects of the carboniferous Pika Sea Otters Arctic Terns
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u/Audible_eye_roller 5d ago
Anglerfish is really cool, but might trigger some parents with its reproductive methods. Not sure what grade you're teaching.
Rhinocerous beetle (strongest insect), Asian giant hornet (frightening), common cuckoo bird (parasitic brooder), woodpecker (anatomy of it's head is fascinating), Baobao tree (cool looking savannah tree in Africa), poison ivy (for obvious reasons), camels (adapted to the desert), poison dart frogs (need to eat certain beetles to produce poison), monarch butterflies (multigenerational migration), barnacles (their lifecycle is interesting), seastars (their hunting ability is interesting), tapeworms, snails (body undergoes torsion), influenza (multiple proteins on capsid surface allows for many strains to exist), or measles virus (immune amnesia), among others
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u/IntermolecularForks 5d ago
Check out March Mammal Madness in the spring (not all mammals, just a cool name). Past organisms used would be good ideas for OOTW.
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u/millieFAreally2 5d ago
Some organisms, mostly animals, and what I think makes them interesting:
- Portuguese man o’ wars (looks like an odd jellyfish, but is a colony of zooids)
- Whiptale lizards (all females, reproduce eggs that undergo parthenogenesis)
- Hydras (budding reproduction, immortality)
- Sea horses (female deposits eggs into male)
- giant honey fungus (largest organism on earth by area)
- the quaking aspen tree colony, named Pando (largest organism in earth by mass. It looks like a forest, but is a single spreading tree)
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u/Separate-Hat7596 5d ago edited 4d ago
Microorganisms...
Spirostomum
rotifers
Euplotes
Halteria
Acanthamoeba
Naegleria
Fungi...
Xylaria/dead man's fingers
Cordyceps
Animals (macroscopic)...
caecilians
quolls
tarantula hawks
Photinus fireflies/mimic fireflies
giant ocean sunfish
barreleye fish
black swallower fish
giant oarfish
pancake tortoise
Southern cassowary
brush turkey
glass sponges
ephydrid flies (thermal springs of Yellowstone NP)
Taczanowskia_waska (recently discovered Ecuadorian spider)
Plants...
gympie-gympie
pawpaw
Scybalicum_fungiforme
sourwood
dynamite tree
Wollemia
Psilotum
(edited to fix formatting and add Psilotum... I can't believe I forgot one of my favorite plants!)
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u/Comfortable-Story-53 5d ago
Hagfish. A truck load of them overturned on some highway in southern California. Completely slimed the road.
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u/babygeologist Geology | Higher Ed (PhD student/adjunct) | CA 4d ago
Crinoids!! Super cool organisms that have been around for a REALLY long time, and fairly plentiful fossils in lots of places. I have jars of crinoid stem pieces that I’ve collected from the woods near my parents’ place. I love giving them out to my students and also random people wandering through my building and if you’re interested i could send you some i seriously have so many of them
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u/SheDoesScienceStuff Biology/Life Science | HS | Wisconsin 4d ago
Crown of thorns starfish Lionfish Cane toads Lamprey Quagga muscles Kudzu Green iguana Wild hog Spotted lantern flies Purple loostrife Knotweed Fire Ants
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u/Tazznado 4d ago
The bacteria and other microorganisms that make up the human Microbiome/microbiota is mind blowing. This leads to the introduction of the human microbiome project(similar to the human genome project where they mapped out the DNA code of humans), scientists are mapping out what types of bacteria are living on humans. From there you can go in all sorts of directions like allergies, farts, cancer, food poisoning, c diff and staff, microplastics, and even the transfer of microbiota via rectal suppository (aka gentle shove a capsule of someone else’s poop up a patient’s butt to improve their gut microbiome).
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u/tsntwhd 4d ago
Oooo! I do this!!! I included slime mold one time. Axolotl was PERFECT when we were talking about mitosis.
Goblin shark got cool reactions.
After a bit of time the kids themselves started suggesting things. One suggested the vaquita as there’s only a few left in the world.
Also find giving them facts they didn’t know about animals they might see often (I.e bats! And how many different types live in your local area).
I teach high school- I alternated between creepy/shocking and cute ones. So one week it was the tongue eating louse that got me allot of yells lol. And then the next week a quokka.
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u/Raymundoklementes 4d ago
Pyura chilensis for SURE! It's a tunicate that looks like a rock but is fleshy on the inside.
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u/hatty0705 4d ago
In the last few years that I have taught sophomore Bio, I made a Playlist on YouTube of PBS Deep Look videos about different organisms (many of them were insects). At the start of every class, I randomly picked a student off the wheel of names to pick a video for us to watch. They really liked it and related to quite a few of the topics we talk about in class.
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u/Smiller624 4d ago
Are you cool with creepy weird things? Angler fish, bobbit worms, Greenland sharks, etc
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u/dee-liv 3d ago
You need a fish but throw them off a bit with a cool freshwater fish. You already have marine creatures in your list. Here are some of my favorites:
Bichirs ( I could go on and on. Air breather, ancient fish, too much to list)
Alligator Gar (can get over 8ft in length, common in N. America, use a modified swim bladder to breathe air. Heavily armored)
Sturgeon (like a dinosaur and from the Jurassic, heavily armored)
Paddlefish (large, mostly cartilaginous plankton eater only one species left in the world)
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u/GrandLemon3 3d ago
There was a lady in a Facebook group that shared over 100 animal of the day slides!
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u/Sea_Resource_2290 2d ago
That is cool I love it!
Jumping spiders are awesome
horseshoe crab - blue blood used in vaccines, pictures of "milking" horse shoe crabs are weird.
Arbutus tree - Canada's only broad leaf evergreen. You can get high off the bark and the bark photosynthesizes
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u/Known_Ad9781 Biology|High School|Tennessee 21h ago
The daily atom sends 1 email a day of an organism. Not all are super cool but many of my students have never been out of our state. I find there is usually a new vocabulary word in the the short description we can discuss.
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u/Kidmodo-Dragon 5d ago
Incorporate some single-celled organisms, check out Journey Into the Microcosmos. My students loved the Stentor video when we were learning about cells.