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Life Science Kit Resources Vancouver School District
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, designed for fifth-graders, helps students understand the web of relationships that links 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. Students begin Ecosystems by setting up a terrarium in which they grow grass, mustard, and alfalfa plants. Then they add crickets and isopods. They also set up an aquarium into which they introduce snails, guppies, elodea, algae, and duckweed. By connecting the terrarium and aquarium, students are able to observe the relationship between the two environments and the organisms living within them. Using test eco-columns that contain only plants, students simulate the effects of pollutants; such as road salt, fertilizer, and acid rain; on an environment. Students then use a food-chain wheel to make inferences about the effects these pollutants might have on their own miniature ecosystems. Later, students read about, explore, and discuss the Columbia River Gorge as a model ecosystem. They analyze this ecosystem from the viewpoint of various users--waterman, dairy farmer land developer, recreational boater, and resident--and present their findings to the class. The activity enables students to appreciate the trade-offs that must be made to reach mutually acceptable solutions to environmental problems. By observing various properties of Ecosystems, you'll help
students begin to understand the diversity of a variety of ecosystems
and the models we can use to describe the nature of the environment
around them. With the activities in Ecosystems, you'll encourage
your students to observe and detail the This is an exciting unit for students. They get to work with living creatures, become investigative experimenters, and draw parallels between the dramatic events occurring inside their model eco-columns and those that occur every day, all over the world. This unit allows your young student scientists to have a chance to observe, touch, test, analyze, build models and see science in action as they · Interpreting test results, to draw conclusions about
factors that affect the Don't be surprised if some of the questions students ask go
beyond what you know or can find out. Because ecological relationships
are complex, research findings continue to change, and people
have widely differing opinions about environmental issues. No
one can provide all the answers. What you as a teacher can do
is help students learn how to Essential Lessons: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13 In doing each of the essential lessons, all content and performance
standards will be met for the Washington State EALR's and Benchmarks.
The lessons can be done in clusters or combined grouping. To
ease Kit usage the following lessons should be done in the above
sequence. The instructional approach to enhance student inquiry
and discovery is to combine the lessons in clusters (1, 2) ,
(3-5) , 6, 7, 8, (10, 11), (12, 13) and then culminate the unit
with final project assessment. Lessons 10 and 11 can be done
as a class, this will allow for a more collaborative approach
and offers the class experience in systematically planning an
experiment and introduces students to the necessity of experimental
controls. The grayed lessons should be done if time is available.
This will assure that you will be able to accommodate all EALR
and WASL requirements. If time is not available the grayed lessons
could be eliminated, but this means that you will need to assure
that the remaining lessons are done in breadth and depth.
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By fifth grade, most children
have become increasingly curious about the complexity of the
world around them and about the relationships between the living
and nonliving elements in their environment. News stories, community
and school projects, and books that promote ecology introduce
them to environmental issues. They are fascinated by ways they
can help save the environment and the organisms in it.