After drafting a lesson plan as an assignment for AEE 530, we then chose a ten minute segment of that fifty minute lesson and presented the ten minute section to our classmates. You can view the lesson I gave here and my reflections on the experience here.
Integrated Pest Management (ENT/AGECO 457)
Lesson 8 of 18: 10 minute Micro-teaching Segment
Lesson Title: How can pest dynamics be modeled and how are thresholds calculated?
Lesson Time: 10 minutes
Hook: Students will learn a quantitative definition of a pest and how to decide when treatment actions are needed to suppress a pest.
Context: In order to manage pests, workers need understanding of how that pest’s abundance is changing over time, the many factors influencing their population growth, how many pests there must be for a problem to be present, and how to make decisions for management.
Lesson Objectives:
- After lesson is complete, students should be able to determine whether an insect is below a level considered “pest”, an occasional pest, or a frequent pest (to instructor’s satisfaction )
- After learning the definitions of economic injury level and action threshold, students should be able to use these to decide whether or not treatment is needed to avoid economic loss
Summary of Lesson/Timeline:
Using thresholds to assess pest populations
Lecture: Regan (~10 minutes)
- How to graph population dynamics
- Non-pest; Occasional pest; Frequent Pest
- Economic Injury Level
- Action Threshold
- How to use to make management decision
Stop for activity (5 minutes or less)
Given a pest abundance graph and using today’s lesson on EIL and AT, decide whether pest is abundant enough to treat in each year. Based on number of years that pest exceeds AT, determine whether pest is occasional or frequent.