Reflection on Oh Deer Activity
The purpose of this activity was to simulate various factors that affect the deer populations. For the first round, some student were deers on one side and other students were resources on the other sides. The deer-students had to look for specific resources that they chose before the simulation begins. The resource-students had to choose one resources from water, shelter, food. Through out the simulation, some deer died and became resources while other deer population increased. As the deer prosper, there is not enough resources which caused competition between deers.When there was a shortage of the resources, the deer population significantly decreased. Also, the influence from predators decreased the deer population. For the final simulation, the deers encountered natural disasters such as forest fires, flood, drought which caused decrease in population.
Overall, I think I was the one who was having the most fun running around the field... These activities are more understandable and memorable than long lectures. I wish we had more of these activities for other units as well, but I noticed there was a limit to physical explanation of some Bio units. However, these activities do help a lot remembering general ideas.
