The Struggle to Survive: Lesson Plan Outline
Elsemarie deVries and Margaret Jones
Engage
Show students the picture of the dune provided and ask them to observe the picture and share
any observations. If any of your students have been to the beach, they could share what they
saw and felt there.
Q. Have any of you been to the beach? What do you see there? What do you notice in
this picture?
A. Plants, sand, trash, etc.
Let students know that the beach is a very harsh environment for plants to grow. If students are
not familiar with them already, now may be good time to introduce some basic vocabulary (for
example, all students, including those who haven’t been to the beach, will need to know what a
beach, dune, and shoreline are. See “Suggested Vocabulary” section.)
Then, either in groups or as a class, ask students to brainstorm some problems that beach
plants might have.
Q. Can you think of some reasons why plants might have a hard time growing on the
beach? (It may be useful to prompt students to think about how the beach differs
from a very fertile area like the rainforest).
A. Plants need fresh water to live, and the beach is very salty. There are no streams or
ponds that could provide water during a dry spell. People can crush plants on the beach.
The tide comes up and can wash plants away. Huge storms come and wash away plants.
The sand can get hot or cold, and there is not much shelter on the beach for plants.
Unlike animals, plants cannot move to find nutrients or water if the environment is
difficult. There are other plants that they may have to compete with for resources like
water, nutrients, or space.
BUT, we still see plants on the dunes! So some plants have overcome these problems and
adapted to the dune environment. Today we’re going to play a game that will help us think
about what plants need to survive and what the beach environment is like for dune grasses.
We talked about why the beach might be a difficult place for a plant to live.
Q. What might help a plant survive on the beach? What type of characteristics would a
plant need to have to thrive in such a harsh environment? (discuss in groups or as a
class)
A. There can be many valid answers here, but one goal for the teacher is to guide
students toward creating a list that will be used for the game. Potential answers that
connect to game characteristics are in (parenthesis). If they don’t provide all of the
answers, help them understand the characteristics that will options in the game. These
5 characteristics need to be written or displayed where everyone can see them:
1. Heat tolerant (able to withstand high temperature, grows well in heat)
2. Deep roots (able to survive in a drought, can reach groundwater)
3. Salt tolerant (can survive salt spray, able to survive a high tide)
4. Cold tolerant (can survive cold temperatures)
5. Good at competing (strong plant, good at growing)
In order to get every one on the same page before the game, the teacher may need to define
some of the terms introduced above. Suggested vocabulary words include: adaptation,
competition, drought, nutrients, and tolerant.
Explore
Play the Game! “The Struggle to Survive”
Break the class into small groups consisting of about 4-6 students. Each group should have
enough student worksheets for each student as well as a single dune profile (see example
worksheet and dune profile at end of lesson).
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Heat tolerant
Deep roots
Salt tolerant
Cold tolerant
Good at competing
Your answers to the question “What might help a plant
survive on the beach?” might have varied, but these 5 plant
characteristics are the ones students need to be familiar with.
Instruct each group to choose three plant characteristics
from the list of 5 to create their own fictional species of dune
grass. The whole group has to agree on just three characteristics, and students should record
their choices on their worksheet. If there is time, you could encourage them to get creative
with this portion, naming or drawing a picture of their type of grass!
You will have as many different “species” of plants as there are groups – unless some groups
happen to choose the same 3 characteristics.
Next, you may need to take a moment to help the students get oriented when looking at the
dune profile. The x and y axes both have the same units (meters), but they cover a different
span (i.e. the x axis goes from 0 to 4 meters but the y axis goes from 0 to 100 meters). To help
students get oriented, you might ask the class some questions like:
Q: Which side is the ocean on?
A: The ocean is on the right.
Q: What happens to the elevation at the shoreline?
A: The elevation is zero at the shoreline because we are measuring elevation from the
mean high water.
Q: What is the distance from the shoreline to the highest point on the dune?
A: 90 meters in this profile. (Of course, this is a generalized profile. It isn’t always 90
meters from the shoreline to the top of the dune.)
Once they understand how the profile works, each individual student should decide where to
place his or her plant on the dune profile. Each group shares a single profile. Students “plant”
their plants by putting a dot or small picture of a plant somewhere along the profile and writing
their initials next to it. Students should record the distance from shoreline and elevation of
their plants on their worksheets.
Ok, time to play! Let the students know, that each plant starts at 25 cm. (To simulate “planting”
baby plants instead of seeds. This will give our plants a much better chance at survival!). They
will be able to see this on their worksheet. To start the game, roll the dice. You just need one
pair of dice per class (we recommend using those big foam ones so everyone can see what’s
going on!). Each possible dice roll (2-12) causes some kind of event, and all the groups will be
following the same events.
After each event, the teacher reads the event description (listed on the next page), and
students record their new plant heights on their worksheets (this will require some simple
arithmetic – addition and subtraction – on the parts of the students). Ten turns represents one
growing season. (It’s unlikely, but if a plant’s height falls to 0, it dies and cannot grow any
more).
On each dice roll one of the following events happens:
(2) HUGE storm. All plants under 2.5 meters elevation get knocked down to 1 cm.
No other plants grow.
(3) Summer heat wave AND drought. Plants with deep roots AND are heat tolerant
grow 1 cm. No other plants grow.
(4) High tide. All plants located within 30 meters of the ocean get knocked down to
1 cm. Other plants grow 1 cm.
(5) Plants start to crowd one another. Any plant within 3 meters of another that is
not good at competing loses 2 cm height. Other plants grow 1 cm.
(6) Summer drought. Plants with deep roots, located at less than 1.5 m elevation
and farther than 50 m from the ocean grow by 2 cm. No other plants grow.
(7) Normal day. Every plant grows 1 cm.
(8) Summer dry spell. Plants with deep roots located at less than 1.5 meters grow 1
cm. No other plants grow.
(9) Windy days. Any plant within 90 meters of the ocean gets lots of salt spray.
Plant within 90 meters of the ocean that are salt tolerance can grow 1 cm. Plants
farther than 90 meters away from the ocean grow 1 cm. No other plants grow.
(10) Family picnic on the dune! Plants located above 2 meters are trampled by
children playing on the dune and lose 10 cm of growth. Other plants grow 1 cm.
(11) Early cold snap. Cold tolerant plants grow 2 cm. No other plants grow.
(12) Animals are munching along. Any plant above 2 meters elevation loses 10 cm
of growth. Other plants grow 1 cm.
After ten turns, the growing season ends, and students can begin to evaluate which
combinations of plant characteristics and location fared the best.
Explain
First have students compare with their group members. Whose plants did the best? Where
were those plants located (distance from ocean and elevation)? Then, have students add up
the heights of all the plants within the group.
Compare across groups as a class. Which groups had the total highest or lowest amount of
growth? Ask the students in those groups to explain why they chose the plant characteristics
they did. Which characteristics seemed the most helpful? Why?
You can also connect their results in the game to the results of our real life experiment (see
slides). Now might be a good time to introduce or review some terms from experimental design
like independent and dependent variable.
Ask students to discuss with their group members to develop a new plan. If you could play the
game again:
What plant characteristics would you choose?
Where would you place your plants?
Ask them to justify these choices with outcomes from the previous game.
(If time allows, you can have them play again and evaluate their new strategies. Otherwise, you
can move into a wrap-up discussion or a perhaps more in-depth statistics or graphing activity).
Elaborate (If there is time. Try to play at least two games so the students can try to strategize)
OPTIONAL – real life connection!! Researchers at UNC-CH planted a dune grass experiment to
try to figure out where plants grow best on the dune. The Powerpoint includes pictures of our
grasses and some notes. Our plants did best when they were fairly far back from the ocean and
at a low elevation, where they can reach the groundwater. Feel free to explore the website link
in the Powerpoint and email Elsemarie at [email protected] with any questions! If you
choose to use this portion, you could ask students to compare the results from their game with
the (simplified) results from our experiment.
Team work and strategy
Q. Did your group have an easy or hard time deciding what plant to form? Why or why not?
Q. Did your group have a plant placing strategy, or did each student do it themselves?
Biology
Q. Are the same characteristics that help a plant survive on the beach useful in other locations?
A. It depends on the characteristic – drought resistance and deep roots are critical on the
beach, but not needed in the rainforest, for example.
Math – Statistics
Q. Given that we were rolling two dice, what is the probability that the numbers 2-12 are
rolled? Did you have any unusual rounds that were full of less probably rolls?
Q. Did you think the event probability matched well with the number it was assigned it? For
example, does it make sense that a HUGE storm happens when a 2 is rolled? Why or why not?
Q. Did you use any knowledge of probability to adjust your strategy as the game went on?
How?
Math – Graphing
Q. If you have more time to spend on this, this activity could easily be paired with an in-class or
homework report where students create a line graph with “time” (each roll) on the x axis and
the height of their plants on the y axis. You could ask them to annotate the chart to explain
what happened any time the plant lost height.
Evaluate
The evaluation portion of this exercise can take the form of the included student
worksheets. Students can demonstrate growth in this activity by justifying why they would or
wouldn’t choose to change their plant characteristics and locations. Of course, feel free to
adapt the worksheet to suit the needs of you and your class.
Figure 1: Sample group plant locations
Teacher’s Resources
FAQs
Q. Is there fresh water in the beach environment?
A. Yes. Underneath the dune there is a lens of freshwater. This is recharged when it rains. Close
to the ocean, all the water is salty.
Q. Why do I see big plants on the dune if they die from lack of water?
A. Natural plants have deep root structures that can access the groundwater deep below the
surface of the dune. The transplants in our experiment (and in the game) haven’t had time to
develop a whole system of roots that can get that fresh water.
Suggested Vocabulary Words (some words have suggested definitions, but
teachers should feel free to substitute grade-appropriate definitions)
Adaptation – (or adaptive trait) a characteristic that allows a species to thrive in
its environment
Beach
Competition
Dependent variable
Drought
Dune – hills or ridges of sand created by the wind. They are common on sandy
beaches and can also be found in the desert. Beach dunes are important because
they help protect the shore from storm effects.
Elevation – height above sea level
Growing season – the warmer part of the year when plants can grow. The
growing season for the plants we studied is from May to October.
Independent Variable –
Nutrients – chemicals which plants and other living organisms need to survive.
Sea Level – the height of the sea surface
Shoreline
Species
Tide – the rising and falling of the sea as a result of the moon’s gravity. There are
two high tides and two low tides per day.
Tolerant – able to survive in difficult conditions