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Bees with backpacks
Years |
Strands |
Proficiencies |
| 7 8 9 10 11 |
number algebra measurement geometry statistics |
understanding problem solving reasoning
|
Bees are necessary for assisting many other plants to produce the foods we eat, including meat and milk. But in Europe and America, beehives are disappearing. This could have catastrophic effects on food production. This “colony collapse disorder” has not yet been seen in Australia.
Australian scientists are studying bee behaviour to add their knowledge to the problem. Bees are fitted with electronic chips which record their movements in and out of the hive. In this way, the scientists can build up a picture of the behaviour of a healthy hive.
Teacher notes
The teacher notes contain: an overview of each of the activities; curriculum links and suggested year levels; background information; prompting questions and key mathematical points; practical suggestions for running the activity; a list of resources needed; and further ideas.
MI_Bees_Teacher.docx 411.17 kB
Activity 1: Making beehives
Years 7–9
Students construct three different regular polygonal prisms from cardboard and join them to make three different types of beehives. They then test the hives for strength and stability. Students compare the capacities of the different prisms which can lead to formulation of appropriate formulas for perimeter, area and volume.
MI_Bees_Activity1_Hives.docx 489.72 kB
Activity 2: Dancing with bees
Years 7–10
Students emulate a ‘waggle dance’ to indicate the direction and distance of a particular place. They do this as an outdoor activity, by creating a video of the directions for a place a long distance away located via google maps.
If this is impractical, there is a modified version for the classroom.
MI_Bees_Activity2_Dances.docx 475.86 kB
Activity 3: Counting bees
Years 7–9
Students conduct a sampling experiment of the form ‘capture-recapture’ to predict the total population.
MI_Bees_Activity3_Counting.docx 476.13 kB
Activity 4: Clever bees
Year 11 General
Students explore the number of possible routes between various numbers of points. They create a network diagram to represent a particular situation and find the shortest route by trial and error. Students then apply the Nearest Neighbour and Minimum Spanning Tree algorithms to arrive at a good approximation of a solution.
MI_Bees_Activity4_Clever.docx 474.39 kB
Activity 5: Bee food
Years 7–8
Students gather and display data about the foods that they eat and which would have been pollinated by bees.
MI_Bees_Activity5_BeeFood.docx 473.49 kB
Activity 6: Bee patterns
Year 7–9
This activity investigates some of the properties of regular polygons, introduces angle sums through tiling patterns and encourages geometrical reasoning.
MI_Bees_Activity6_BeePatterns.docx 491.66 kB
