Beach Hopper Bonanza (continued)
for the next experiment.
Experiment 3-What direction will a beach hopper hop?
The expected answer-beach hoppers orient themselves
according to the slope of the beach, jumping landward. This
prevents them from moving downward on the shore where
they would get into deeper water where it would be harder
for them to swim. (See field journal sheet 3 on OIMB GK12
webpage in Resources section)
The students will hopefully have collected 20-30 beach
hoppers. Lead a discussion on how the beach hoppers should
be released (head towards the water, head towards the land,
etc.) Students release equal numbers of beach hoppers at the
high, mid, and low zones and observe the beach hoppers’
behaviors. Assign students the task of releasing one beach
hopper at time and have them observe the direction they hop.
One student will record the direction the beach hopper moved,
writing if the beach hopper stayed there or continued moving.
Student placing leaves into a mesh bag, which will then be placed
in the stream as a “trap” for macroinvertebrates.
If time remains, students can practice sieving sand and
looking for other animals, seeing what lives where.
Post lessons
Lessons of Discovery:
Many lessons, from a variety of disciplines can be created
based on the field trip.
Teaching and learning along
Examples:
Graphing-have the students graph the distribution of
beach hoppers per zone (low, mid and high tide lines)
with your students
Day in the Life of a Beach Hopper-each student will write
and illustrate a story depicting how a beach hopper would
Innovative tools allow a teacher to extend
spend a day
class activities on stream ecology and forest
Zonation poster-students can work in groups or individu-
ally to draw a poster showing what they found in different
history
zones of the beach.
Resources
by Charles Graham
Beach Hopper Biology Websites
http://www.wallawalla.edu/academics/departments/biology/
rosario/inverts/Arthropoda/Crustacea/Malacostraca/Eumalacos-
traca/Peracarida/Amphipoda/Gammaridea/Talitridae/Megalorches-
I
have made an interesting observation about teaching recently.
Some of the best lessons are not necessarily the carefully
planned and orchestrated units, but rather the ones that grew
tia_californiana.html
and took shape as the project progressed. I have found that
http://www.answers.com/topic/beach-hopper
some of my best teaching has been when I didn’t know the exact
OIMB GK12 Beach Hopper Unit Summary
outcome in advance and learned something new right along with
http://www.uoregon.edu/~oimb/Academics/GK12/
my students. This has been my experience with environmental
field%20inquiries/beach%20hopper%20field%20inquiry.pdf
exploration into stream ecology and the “Leaf Pack” program.
About five years ago, I was looking for a way to have my
OIMB GK12 Field Trip Data Sheets
6
th
graders make deeper environmental connections. My classes
http://www.uoregon.edu/~oimb/Academics/GK12/
had raised salmon and trout for several years through a Fish &
field%20inquiries/Hopper%20Field%20Journal.pdf
Wildlife program, and I sought out a way to extend my student’s
learning about life cycles and habitat into the stream ecology that

supports fish. I decided to give the “Leaf Pack” program from
Stephanie Schroeder is a Ph.D candidate at the Oregon Institute of
LaMotte a try, even though this was new territory for me, as I
Marine Biology in Charleston, Oregon. This material is based upon
had no academic training or background in the study of macroin-
work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant
vertebrates.
No. 0338153.
The basic procedure of a Leaf Pack experiment is pretty
straight forward. Students identify the primary trees in the ripar-
ian zone that “feed” the stream. Leaves are collected, weighed,
and placed in mesh bags, then are carefully placed into the water.
Observational data is collected about the stream, stream banks,
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