This article provides a great launching point for exploring the diversity of invertebrates in your nearby woods. You won't need an extensive wooded area for this survey, so you can make use of any small woodland on your school grounds. Using the resources below to guide you, have students create several pitfall traps to capture, observe, and release woodland invertebrates. Pitfall traps offer an easy-to-create, low-tech, but highly effective means of performing a survey of ground-dwelling invertebrates. Bury traps in varied habitats (ie, hemlock forest, deciduous forest, early successional forest, mature forest, field).

Have students refer to the methodology in the Colby Hill Ecological Project invertebrates study (listed below) to develop scientific methods for conducting the research. Then have them create data collection sheets and develop a hypothesis of what they expect to find in their studies. Though students will not be able to make detailed species identification of the invertebrates they trap, they can use their observation skills and a basic invertebrate identification key to identify general classifications of invertebrates. Have each student write a report summarizing their findings.

Website:  This webpage provides instructions for making pitfall traps, plus instructions for a bunch of other great low-tech monitoring protocols, from coverboards for monitoring reptiles and amphibians to track plates for capturing the tracks of small animals.

Students can read Vermont-based research studies of terrestrial invertebrates that utilized pitfall traps by visiting the Colby Hill Ecological Project web pages on the Vermont Family Forests website.

Biokids Invertebrate Identification Guide.

Terrestrial Invertebrate Identification. Succinct, two-page ID guide.