Grasslands in the Classroom

Building a Prairie from the Ground Up

How do you explain a grassland to a classroom full of young people who may never have visited one?

Build one.

Not a real prairie, of course, but a classroom model that allows students to discover what makes a grassland an ecosystem rather than simply a field of grass.

The “Build a Grassland” challenge is an easy, hands-on activity that introduces students to native plants, wildlife, food webs, habitat needs, and the ecological processes that keep southeastern grasslands healthy. Best of all, it turns students from listeners into problem-solvers.

Begin With an Empty Grassland

Start with a large sheet of poster paper, bulletin-board paper, or even an empty section of the classroom floor. Tell students:

“This is our grassland. Right now, nothing lives here. What will we need to create a healthy ecosystem?”

You might be surprised by the answers.

Students will probably suggest grass first. Then someone will add flowers. Before long, butterflies, bees, birds, rabbits, snakes, and other animals will begin appearing in their imagined grassland.

Write each suggestion on the paper, use pictures printed ahead of time, or have students draw and add the organisms themselves.

But don't stop when the grassland looks full.

That is when the investigation really begins.

Build It From the Plants Up

Ask students what should be added first.

Plants provide a natural starting point because they capture energy from sunlight and form the foundation of most grassland food webs.

Introduce several southeastern native grassland plants. Depending on your location, these might include little bluestem, Indiangrass, blazing stars, asters, goldenrods, milkweeds, mountain mints, coneflowers, or other locally appropriate species.

Rather than simply identifying the plants, ask what each might contribute.

Could its flowers provide nectar or pollen? Could its leaves feed a caterpillar? Might its seeds feed a bird? Could its stems provide shelter or nesting sites? What might be happening around its roots?

Students quickly discover that a plant isn't simply something growing in the grassland. It is habitat.

Bring in the Pollinators

Next, introduce pollinators.

Give students pictures or cards representing bumble bees, solitary native bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, flies, and wasps. Ask them to decide where each belongs in the grassland.

Then introduce a challenge:

What happens if all of the wildflowers disappear?

Students can physically remove the flowers from their model.

What happens to the pollinators that depended upon them? What happens to plants that need those animals for pollination? What happens to the animals that eat the insects or seeds?

Suddenly, students aren't memorizing a definition of an ecosystem. They are watching ecological relationships unfold in front of them.

Add Predators, Prey and Decomposers

Continue building.

Grasshoppers and caterpillars eat plants. Birds and spiders eat insects. Small mammals eat seeds. Hawks hunt smaller animals. Fungi, bacteria, insects, and other decomposers help recycle dead material.

Use yarn to connect organisms that depend upon one another.

Soon the classroom grassland becomes covered with a web of string.

Now remove one organism.

What happens to the strings connected to it?

This provides a simple but memorable illustration of why biodiversity matters. The more students investigate, the more difficult it becomes to find something in the grassland that isn't connected to something else.

Don't Forget What Is Underground

Once students have filled the surface with life, ask them an unexpected question:

“Are we finished?”

Then look underground.

Grasslands are remarkable not only for what grows above the soil but also for what happens beneath it. Many native grasses and wildflowers develop extensive root systems. Around those roots are fungi, bacteria, insects, and other organisms that help cycle nutrients and build soil.

Have students draw roots extending beneath their plants. Compare shallow and deep root systems and discuss how roots can help plants obtain water, hold soil in place, and survive drought.

The activity suddenly becomes three-dimensional in students' imaginations.

There is a grassland above their feet—and another world below them.

Now Add Fire

There is one more piece of the puzzle.

Show students a card labeled FIRE.

Their first reaction may be that fire destroys the grassland. That creates an opportunity to introduce one of the most fascinating characteristics of many southeastern grassland ecosystems.

Ask students what might happen if shrubs and young trees continually grew in their grassland and were never removed. Gradually add paper trees over their flowers and grasses.

Where did the sunny habitat go?

Explain that historically, fire—along with grazing and other disturbances—helped maintain many open grassland ecosystems. Prescribed fire can reduce accumulated vegetation, limit woody encroachment, recycle nutrients, and stimulate new growth in fire-adapted plants.

Students begin to understand an important ecological lesson: something that looks destructive can sometimes be essential to maintaining an ecosystem.

The Grassland Challenge

Finish the activity by dividing students into small groups and giving each one a challenge.

Perhaps their grassland suddenly loses most of its flowering plants. Maybe an invasive plant begins spreading. Fire is excluded for many years. Pollinator numbers decline. Or the grassland becomes divided by development.

Ask each group:

What changed? What organisms could be affected? What could we do to help the grassland recover?

Now students aren't merely learning about conservation.

They are thinking like conservationists.

From Classroom to Conservation

The final step is the most important: take the lesson outside.

Ask students to find some of the same relationships in a schoolyard, garden, park, roadside, prairie restoration, or natural grassland.

Find a flower and watch what visits it.

Look beneath a grass plant.

Search for seeds.

Watch a bird hunting insects.

Look for evidence of decomposition.

Students may discover that the web they created in the classroom exists all around them.

The goal of Grasslands in the Classroom isn't for every child to memorize the names of dozens of species. It is to help young people understand that a grassland is a living community built upon relationships.

Give them plants, pollinators, roots, soil, birds, insects, fire, and a ball of yarn, and they can begin discovering those relationships for themselves.

And somewhere between the first blade of grass and the final strand of yarn, an empty piece of paper becomes an ecosystem—and a classroom of students begins to see a grassland differently.