Nitrogen Cycle Game – submitted by Laura Wodlinger, YRDSB

Is your passport up to date? Travel the world as a Nitrogen compound going through the Nitrogen Cycle Game.

Teaching cycles of matter in grade 9 ecology can be boring and hard to visualize for students. This activity get students up and moving by pretending to be various nitrogen compounds moving through the nitrogen cycle.

This activity addresses multiple misconceptions about cycles of matter as some students end up cycling between only a few stations , while others travel the entire cycle.  It’s all controlled by a roll of the dice.
This can also be used as a critical thinking (decode the puzzle) challenge to have students use the info from multiple stations to put together what the entire cycle looks like as a whole.
Curriculum: 9 Academic/Applied – Biology/Ecology
Links: 
From the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the UCAR Center for Science Education 
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