Challenge the assumptions of students regarding the timing of tree establishment in succession. Improve observational skills. Students conceptual understanding of the role of trees in secondary succession will improve. The observational skills of students will progressively improve during the intervention.
Students discuss ideas about trees in succession.
Students construct concept map. Instructor subsequently writes actual number observable. Students have often been taught in previous classes that trees arrive and establish in old fields only after the grasses have prepared the site for them. This is Clementsian dogma found in almost every high school and non-majors university text. This intervention will teach the students the power of science through their observations of the timing of tree establishment in the long term succession plots.