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Contents

• Introduction
• Kit Topics
• Objectives
• Themes and Concepts
• District Standards
• Assessment

Introduction

The Ecosystems unit is a Science and Technology for Children (STC) kit developed by the National Science Resources Center at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.

No organism on earth lives isolated and independent from all others. Every organism--including humans--exists within a community of living and nonliving things, called an ecosystem. Ecosystems, a 16 lesson unit designed for fifth-graders, helps students understand the web of relationships that link organisms to one another and to their natural environment. By constructing, observing, discussing, and reading about both land and water ecosystems in this unit, students can develop a growing sensitivity to living things and what they need to survive.

In this unit, students create a model ecosystem by connecting a terrarium and aquarium. This model ecosystem contains both living and nonliving elements. Throughout the unit, students nurture the ecosystems within the ecocolumn, observe change in each environment, and prepare for pollution experiments to determine the effects of pollutants on organisms in an ecosystem.

Kit Topics

Lesson 1: Thinking about Ecosystems

Lesson 2: Setting up the Terrarium

Lesson 3: Setting up the Aquarium

Lesson 4: Adding Animals to the Aquarium

Lesson 5: Observing the Completed Aquarium

Lesson 6: Adding Animals to the Terrarium

Lesson 7: Joining the Terrarium and Aquarium

Lesson 8: Upsetting the Stability

Lesson 9: Reporting on Pollutants

Lesson 10: Planning Pollution Experiments

Lesson 11: Setting Up Our Pollution Experiments

Lesson 12: Observing Early Effects of Pollution

Lesson 13: Where Do Pollutants Go?

Lesson 14: Drawing Conclusions About Our Experiment

Lesson 15: Examining a Real Environmental Problem

Lesson 16: Holding the Mini-Conference: A Look at Trade-Offs

Objectives

Students are expected to:

• use a hand lens, pH paper, measuring devices, and other testing equipment appropriately.
• conduct, record, and organize daily observations.
• plan, implement, and analyze experiments and draw conclusions from the results.
• make and test predictions.
• identify ecosystems as stable or disturbed and recognize the causes of a disturbed ecosystem as natural or human-made.
• read for more information about ecosystems and pollution.
• communicate information through writing, drawing, and discussion.
• apply previously learned information to analyze a problem and suggest solutions.
• develop sensitivity toward living things and understand that human behavior can positively or negatively affect them.
• respect evidence from an experiment and recognize that evidence can inform a decision.
• develop interest in investigating ecosystems.
• recognize the importance of repeating experiments to get valid test results.

Concepts

• An ecosystem is a community of organisms and its interaction with its environment.
• Organisms can be categorized by the functions they serve in an ecosystem: producers, consumers, or decomposers.
• Organisms in an ecosystem have dependent and interdependent relationships, which can be illustrated by food webs.
• Factors that affect growth and reproduction of organisms in an ecosystem include light, water, temperature, and soil.
• Natural and human-made events can "disturb" an ecosystem.
• A pollutant is anything that can harm living organisms when too much of it is released into an ecosystem.
• Pollution is the condition that results when pollutants interact with the environment.
• Pollutants can affect the stability of an ecosystem: solutions can help minimize or alleviate the effects of pollutants.

District Standards

The Ecosystems kit meets the following District Standards:

Standard 1: Students understand the processes of scientific investigation and design, conduct, communicate about, and evaluate such investigations. (1.a, 1.b, 1.c, 1.d, 1.e, 1.f, 1.g, 1.h, 1.i)

Standard 3: Life Science: Students know and understand the characteristics and structure of living things, the process of life, and how living things interact with each other and their environment. (3.1.a, 3.1.b, 3.1.c, 3.1.d, 3.1.e, 3.2.a, 3.2.b, 3.2.c, 3.2,d, 3.2.e)

Standard 5: Students know and understand interrelationships among science, technology, and human activity and how they can effect the world. (5.a, 5.b, 5.c, 5.d)

Standard 6: Students understand that science involves a particular way of knowing and understand common connections among scientific disciplines. (6.a. 6.b, 6.c, 6.d, 6.e, 6.f)

Assessment

In the Ecosystems kit, assessment is an ongoing, integral part of instruction. Strategies fall into three categories: matched pre-and post-unit assessments, embedded assessments, and final assessments. The pre/post-unit assessment questions provide two set of comparable data to indicate student growth in knowledge and skills. Embedded assessments are woven into the unit and provide an ongoing profile of student progress and thinking. Specific guidelines for a variety of assessments are found at the end of several lessons. A detailed assessment chart may be found on page 17 in the teacher's guide. Pages 193-195 cover the post-unit assessment, while pages 197-203 cover additional assessments and blackline masters.

This web page is maintained by Leanne Graves.