Finding core elements in four Intermountain West programs

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Section Three. Designing Biocontrol Lesson Plans. Finding core elements in four Intermountain West programs

Navigating the Biocontrol In Your Backyard portal


Step One. Finding core elements in four Intermountain West programs

In this step, you will revisit program access points and find a variety of resources to help you develop lesson and learning plans. You will access content from Bugs With An Attitude and the Interactives media, photos from Idaho Student Bug Crew and Extras media, a video training clip from Holding The Line, and lastly, graphics and activities from Whats In Your World with supporting video from Movies.

Brief Overview. Learning and teaching go hand in hand. There are multiple ways of learning. One way of learning is using the senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. Educators understand that presenting information in three different ways leads to a higher learning ability and information retention. Researchers generally agree that episodic learning, hands-on doing, leads to an even higher retention and behavior change over the course of a student's lifetime.

In this lesson you will collect stand alone elements for designing a lesson plan later in Step Two. You will focus on the leafy spurge stem boring beetle Oberea erythrocephala to see how students in Idaho monitor the bioagent's effectiveness. Monitoring methods change rapidly as more is learned. The methods you find here 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 will collect:

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


Let's begin exploring four Intermountain West Programs. Remember that content is relative to Montana and Idaho ecosystems and social structures. You will learn in Section Four, later, how to adapt content to make it relevant to Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. The same processes can be applied to adapting content for training and teaching methods for specific ecosystems anywhere.

Task #1.1. Navigate from the Biocontrol In Your Backyard Home Page to Bugs With An Attitude, by clicking either the icon at the bottom of the page, or the text in blue below, Bugs With An Attitude Gateway. Remember that you can open two windows and place them side by side to keep this instruction page at your fingertips as you go through the steps in the second window.

Task #1.2. From the Bugs With An Attitude gateway main page, click on the icon with the insects and ruler with text USDA-APHIS. You will see instructions for making a Daubenmire frame for less than $5.00. Scroll down to find other resources provided by APHIS. APHIS is short for USDA, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The APHIS Plant Protection and Quarantine program fact sheets and protocol for obtaining permits are all on this page. For now, we are interested in using the information on building a Daubenmire frame so that we can use it later in our lesson plan to sample plant populations. You can print a pdf of the page, or edit:copy the text and graphics to place in a Word of Text document and print for the classroom. Return to Biocontrol In Your Backyard (Portal) Home Page by clicking the icon at the page bottom.

Task #1.3. Navigate to Interactives using the button on the Portal Home Page. Click on Biocontrol How To Monitor Flash Cards and click "Save" on the prompt to download the pdf file to your computer. Return to the Portal Home Page.

Task #1.4. Navigate to Idaho Student Bug Crew by clicking on the program icon or the blue text Idaho Student Bug Crew Gateway. Click on the icon with the graphic of the bug and the text, The Bug Crew. Click on the picture icon that has the Daubenmire frame on the ground with students documenting data on a clip-board and the text reads, Monitoring. Read the description "Highlights of Monitoring in 2011." Right click on the Monitoring icon and select "Save Link As" and save the picture icon to your computer. You may want to optionally navigate to Extras from the Portal Home Page, click on the button Extras: Photographs of People and download other photos of people collecting insects. Return to the Portal Home Page by clicking on the Idaho Student Bug Crew banner or bottom icon to get to the program gateway main page, and then clicking on the portal icon at the bottom of the page.

Task #1.5. Navigate to Holding The Line and click on play and watch the video captioned, "Forest Service Entomologist Liz Hebertsen demonstrates Aphthona and Oberea realease". Bookmark this page to show it later in your classroom lesson plan. Return to the Portal Home Page.

Task #1.6. Navigate to Whats In Your World and click on the Lessons button to go to Core Objectives Whats In Your World. Scroll down to the Student Pub and Lessons buttons associated with the Bold text Be a Naturalist. Note that the objectives of this student pub and lesson plan are to have students (1) use their senses to make observations of the world around them; and (2) use skills of journaling, sketching and mapping to investigate the natural world. Right click on both buttons: Student Pub and Lessons and choose "Save Link As" from the drop down menu. A prompt for each button will ask where you want to download the pdf file to your computer. If you simply click on the buttons, you are directed to a wiki page with an Adobe icon for each file name. Right click on the Adobe icons Les5.pdf, for the teacher guide to activities to support the student publication spread, and WS3Pg5-6.pdf. Choose "Save Link As" and save both files to your computer.

Task #1.7. While still on the Core Objectives Whats In Your World page, scroll down to the bold text, Leafy Spurge, and select the graphic for Leafy Spurge stem boring beetle Oberea erythrocephala. Right click on the graphic of the insect and "Save Link As" to your computer. You may optionally choose to go to Extras and download a larger version of this thumbnail graphic. Once you navigate to Extras, scroll down and click on the button Extras: BioAgent Color Drawing. Click on the Oberea erythrocephala thumbnail. A full resolution jpg is available for you to download to your computer for use in the classroom. Right click on the full resolution graphic and select "Save Link As" from the drop down menu to download the LS-Oberea.jpg file to your computer. Return to the Portal Home Page.

Task #1.8. Navigate to Movies and click on BioA: leafy spurge. Watch the short clip with the caption, Listening to the squeak sound made by Oberea erythrocephala. Play the video several times and listen for the squeaking noise made by the Oberea erythrocephala. Bookmark this page for use later in your lesson plan. You now have the core media elements you need to advance to Step Three. Designing a lesson plan using stand alone elements.

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Bugs With An Attitude Gateway
Holding The Line Gateway
Idaho Student Bug Crew Gateway
Whats In Your World Gateway

RECAP: Step One. Finding core elements in four Intermountain West programs

In Step One you revisited access points to find resources in four different education programs housed in this portal: Bugs With An Attitude, Idaho Student Bug Crew, Holding The Line, and Whats In Your World. You found directions to build a Daubenmire frame for under $5.00. You downloaded flash cards to learn how Idaho students use the Daubenmire frame to evaluate leafy spurge biocontrol efficacy. You navigated to another program to select a photograph of students using a Daubenmire frame. At another program site, you viewed a training clip. You found color illustrations of the leafy spurge biocontrol insects. You found an outdoor activity to engage students in using their senses to explore nature and viewed the short film clip to listen for the sound made by the Oberea erythrocephala, the leafy spurge bioagent released in the training film you viewed earlier. You bookmarked video media and collected stand alone elements from a variety of access points. In Step Two you will use these elements to design a lesson plan.

You can advance by clicking Section Three. Step Two.



Content for Biocontrol in Your Backyard is provided by individual program sponsors.
Content is formatted and uploaded by InterMedia
The Biocontrol In Your Backyard Portal collaboration with The Bugwood Network and its content accessible
format are sponsored by USDA Forest Service, Forest Health Protection, Forest Health Technology Enterprise Team.
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Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health at the University of Georgia