Designing a lesson plan using stand alone elements

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Section Three. Designing Biocontrol Lesson Plans. Designing a lesson plan using stand alone elements

Navigating the Biocontrol In Your Backyard portal


Step Two. Designing a lesson plan using stand alone elements

In Section Three Step One you bookmarked video clips and collected stand alone elements for designing a lesson plan. In Step Two your will design a lesson plan using these elements. The elements you collected focus on the leafy spurge stem boring beetle Oberea erythrocephala to see how students in Idaho monitor the bioagent's effectiveness. Remember that monitoring methods change rapidly as more is learned. The methods you found are specific to Idaho and may change at any time. Your state USDA, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Plant Protection and Quarantine personnel can provide methods for your state.

What you collected:

Leafy spurge stem boring beetle Oberea erythrocephala

  • Instructions to build a Daubenmire frame for under $5
  • Flash Cards: Why do we monitor biocontrol efficacy and how do we monitor leafy spurge biocontrol
  • Photographs of people using a Daubenmire frame to monitor biocontrol efficacy
  • Bookmark a training video demonstration by a Forest Entomologist releasing Oberea erythrocephala in a leafy spurge infestation
  • Student publication page and teacher activity guide for using the senses to learn weed science
  • Color illustration of Oberea erythrocephala
  • Bookmark a movie clip to listen to the squeaking sound made by Oberea erythrocephala



Brief Overview. Designing a lesson plan using stand alone elements begins with understanding your audience. For this exercise, the audience is students or mentors who work with a Fourth through Eighth Grade (ages 10-14) audience. Your students previously learned about native and non-native invasive plants and the biological control agents (bioagents), insects and pathogens, which hinder the host plant's ability to survive. Your objective is to introduce a scientific method that scientists use to measure the effectiveness of bioagents in the field.

Optional Additional Background Resources: You can download a quick overview of Oberea erythrocephala and five other bioagents used to control leafy spurge in Biocontrol Flash Cards found in Interactives media. To learn more about the introduction of bioagents to stop weed spread, you can review the PowerPoint presentation Biological Control of Weeds 101 from Section One Biocontrol Basics Step Three. You can learn even more about integrating biological control into a weed management strategy from curriculum written for the K-8 audience by reviewing from What's In Your World student publication spread "We Need Many Ways To Fight Weeds" and the teacher activity guide that contains more background "There are many Ways to Fight Weeds!"

For now, you will begin to consider how to approach a lesson plan for students and mentors Grades 4 through 8. You will consider how many of the optional media elements you will need to fill the time you have available for the lesson: an afternoon, an hour.

Task 2.1. Be prepared. Have materials and media ready. You may want to demonstrate in a later session how to assemble and use a Daubenmire frame and have the materials on hand. But for now, you will use the photographs and graphics that you downloaded to your computer in Step One. In a paperless environment, everything you need for the lesson is within this portal--printing hard copies is optional. Make sure that you bookmarked the videos and have them ready to play in separate tabs (Internet windows) so that you are not waiting for streaming or downloading media.

Task 2.2. Engage your audience. Activities are a good beginning. Consider beginning the lesson with a discussion on exploring the natural world using the five senses: taste, sight, touch, smell, and hearing. You will implement one or all of the senses activities found in the teacher activities you downloaded in Step One for "Senses Investigation". The 45-minute activity can be adjusted to the time you choose to allow for this exercise. If you choose to begin the lesson with this activity, save Hearing (step eight) activity for last. This will allow you to segue to the video clip you bookmarked in Step One and have ready to play, "Listen to the squeaking sound made by Oberea erythrocephala." Play the short clip several times asking students to listen closely for a squeaking noise made by the insect.

Task 2.3. Relate the bioagent to it effectiveness, controlling leafy spurge. Consider asking students, who are now engaged in the Oberea erythrocephala by listening to its squeaky sounds, why such a squeaky tiny thing can control leafy spurge? Allow each student to contribute to the discussion. Use their ideas to segue to the flash cards that you downloaded in Step One and compare their ideas with the science found on the leafy spurge biocontrol flash card suggested as optional background resources. Students ideas are a good segue to the next step using the why and how to monitor biocontrol efficacy flash cards.

Task 2.4. Relate the Daubenmire frame for sampling. Ask students if they think an insect like the Oberea erythrocephala is as effective on its own as it might be in company with other insects that attack different parts of leafy spurge at different times of the year. Allow time for all of the students to contribute their ideas. Relate their ideas to the monitoring flash cards from Interactives media and the building a Daubenmire frame information found on the Bugs With An Attitude site. Ask students how they think counting plant populations, cover, and height of plants might help them understand the biocontrol efficacy. Discuss what kinds of photographs might help researchers better understand the effectiveness of each bioagent in a landscape or ecosystem. Ask students how they think researchers might get insects onto the host plants in the field, and use their ideas to segue to the video in the next task.

Task 2.5. Introduce students to one method for releasing Oberea erythrocephala. View the video of the Forest Ranger demonstrating how to release biological control insects at the Holding The Line project. The insects are helping private and public landmanagers to stop leafy spurge from spreading to the Caribou-Targhee National Forest and Yellowstone National Park.

Task 2.6. Recap. Display the color illustration you downloaded of the Oberea erythrocephala and the photograph icon of people using the Daubenmire frame to monitor biocontrol efficacy. Ask students to discuss why they think monitoring over time is important.


RECAP: Step Two. Designing a lesson plan using stand alone elements. In Step Two you thought about how you might assemble stand alone elements to achieve a specific objective for a designated audience. You were introduced to a number of resources that can help you fill up a large timeframe, or adapt content for a shorter period of time. In Step Three you will learn how a group of teachers plan and design an invasive native and non-native plant learning station for 947 students from 14 different schools during a field trip to a wildlife refuge.

You can advance by clicking Step Three.


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Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health at the University of Georgia