Ecosystems

SEPs- Students should be able to know and understand what plants need to survive.  By growing and conducting models students will be able to determine the basic needs of both plants and animals. Students will also be able to understand how animals disperse seeds. The standards at this level are going on to address the relationship between plants and animals in an ecosystem.

DCIs- The video was excellent in explaining the scaffold of an ecosystem at all levels. In early elementary, students should understand animals and what they need to survive. Food, space, temperature, sunlight, and their adaptations help them able to survive. Building on that knowledge and comparing and contrasting the difference between plants and animals. Plants need sunlight and the interdependence animals have on plants, including carnivores.

CCC- Energy and matter and how resources are recycled. Students at this level are beginning the understanding ecosystems through plants and animals. This unit would focus on decomposers in the ecosystem- worms, mushrooms, bugs, etc. Students would understand how energy recycles through an ecosystem through the conservation of decomposition-plants-animals-carnivores- back to decomposition.

When we studied respiration and transpiration the class and I did a demonstration with a mirror and a breath of air.  Students visually saw the vapor on the mirror.  We placed a plastic bag on a small branch of a tree that had a couple leaves.  We went out the next day and there was "water" collected in the bag.  The kids were amazed and could now picture in their mind what the two were to each type of organism.