Development of Teaching Material Using Owl Pellet of the Zoo No.2: Practical Research on "Nature and Humans" in Lower Secondary School.

Abstract

Under the new Japanese course of study, the use of real life experience, utilization ofscientific museum and application of local resources are given emphasis. But there arefew teaching materials of food web that students understand by observations andexperiments. Teaching material of owl pellets from the local zoo in Japan wasdeveloped by Chiga (2013b) et. al. In this research, the use of pellets and "bone chart" were tried in science classes at the 9th grade in Japan. This lesson aims to enablestudents to gain understanding about the quantitative relation between upperconsumer and lower consumer. As a result, almost of all students were interested andcarried out the activity positively. They had a better understanding about not onlythe eat-or-be-eaten relation but also the quantitative relation between upper consumerand lower consumer from dissection of the owl pellet. Furthermore, it is possible ina lesson because students can do its activity within 25minutes. Therefore, we thinkthat owl pellets are effective as teaching material to understand concept the food web.This lesson is a new style of the science lesson for utilization of the zoo.