Lesson Overview: Students will create a human model demonstrating how fire scars are formed on a tree trunk. Then they will examine a cross section from a fire-scarred tree that is provided in the trunk and describe its fire history.

Lesson Goal: To increase students’ understanding of how trees can survive fires, how fire scars are formed, and how some trees have survived frequent fires.

Objectives:

• Students can calculate the years between fires from a sample.
• Students can find the longest, shortest, and average intervals between fires.
• Students can write a report that summarizes the fire history of the tree.