Year 11 Science Food Chain Study

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Our science learning in Year 11 at Lansdowne School has recently looked at the food chain and the many implications that this has on the natural environment. We were able to visit the nearby Horniman Museum to see some of these ideas at first hand. The Horniman contains many wonderful living exhibits such as an aquarium and a bee colony.

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This work has been followed up back at Lansdowne School with an in-depth understanding as to how humans can benefit from bees, and how we can help to create a safe environment for them.

We started off our work by observing that we shouldn’t be afraid of bees. They provide an incredibly important role in pollinating our vegetables and flowers. We watched a short video to show how this natural process is far more successful than any attempts to try and re-create a mechanical system to pollinate plants.

Year 11 then researched the different roles that can be found in a bee hive. We learnt that the workers do all of the hard work. The Queen Bee has the role of laying eggs to create new workers.

Our work then progressed to look at the serious issue of how the worldwide population of bees is in decline. The pupils completed a worksheet suggesting reasons as to why this might be taking place.

Finally we concluded by thinking of ways in which we can try and reverse this situation. We found that the solutions were really quite simple: we need to plant more flowers, and not to contaminate these flowers with pesticides.

You can listen to a keen Year 11 student explaining more about this work in the short recording below.

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