Backyard Ecosystem
Content Standards
Explain the parts of a simple system, their roles, and their relationships to the system as a whole.
Explain the concept of order in a system (e.g., first to last manufacturing steps; trophic levels; simple to complex—levels of biological organization from cell to organism).
http://www.pdesas.org/standard/PdfStandard/101333
Pennsylvania Department of Education standards SAS Standards Aligned System Grade Seven
ISTE NETS-S
Communication and collaboration
Research and information fluency
Critical thinking, problem-solving, & decision-making
Digital citizenship
Instructional Objective(s)
Students will be expected to create concept maps of how these things are interrelated.
Students will be expected to use a digital camera, or smart phones to record data and a computer to upload their data to the Project Noah site.
Summary of the Activity
Second trophic level
First trophic level
Third trophic level
Snakes eat rats at the secondary trophic level, so they are secondary consumers.
Evaluation Plan for Students
I will walk around the classroom to make sure that students are uploading animals, outdoor nature, and organism’s photos to the Project Noah site. Also, I will make sure that students are identifying living things they found in the field. Because some organisms, like a cardinal, might be easier to identify whereas others, like certain types of plants or birds, might be more challenging. This is why I will make sure that they are getting help from project Noah community members in identifying those unknown species.
Then I will circle around the classroom and observe all students ecosystem concept maps to see if students have included the predator/prey relationships, different trophic levels, printed photographs, made clear labels, and made arrows that indicates the energy flow on their large poster board paper or on the computer.
Also, students will turn in a backyard ecosystem reflection paper for additional 25 points and on their concept maps I will give them a letter grade. At the end, I will be checking the Noah project website daily to see if any students made comments on their missions or posted Identifications on other’s missions and if students have responded to other’s missions then, I will assign those students ten extra points toward their final grade.