UNIT 4: ECOSYSTEMS RESTORATION
CHAPTER 1
In Chapter 1, students investigate why the animals in a portion of the Costa Rican rain forest aren’t growing and thriving. The unit begins with students exploring various ecosystems and setting up terrariums to serve as model ecosystems throughout the unit. Students then explore the question of how animals grow by reading the book Matter Makes It All Up, making models of how animals take in and use matter from their environments, and using the Ecosystem Restoration Simulation to visualize what happens to food matter when it is eaten by organisms in an ecosystem. Students learn that all living things in an ecosystem are made of matter, matter transfers from organism to organism through food, and food matter becomes body matter. Additionally, students learn that animals also use some food molecules to release energy for movement and growth. Throughout the chapter, students engage in the scientific practice of making evidence-based arguments.
CHAPTER 2
In Chapter 2, students investigate why cecropia trees in the project area aren’t growing and thriving. They do this by analyzing data from the project area and making and recording observations of both their terrariums and the Ecosystem Restoration Simulation. Students read the book Energy Makes It All Go as they investigate the question of where food molecules for plants come from. They use models to investigate how plants get their food and how energy enters and flows through the ecosystem. Students learn that, like animals, plants grow by changing food molecules into body molecules that can build their plant bodies and use some food molecules to release energy for movement and growth. However, plants make their own food by using carbon dioxide from the air, water, and energy from sunlight. Students continue to deepen their understanding of scientific argumentation through discussing claims and evidence with one another and by writing arguments for the audience of Natural Resources Rescue.
CHAPTER 3
In Chapter 3, students investigate why the cecropia trees aren’t growing and thriving in the soil in the project area. At the beginning of the chapter, students receive new data that gets them thinking about the critical role of soil in an ecosystem. They analyze and interpret data from the project area, the Ecosystem Restoration Simulation, and from firsthand investigations with soil to figure out the differences that could explain why the cecropia trees in the project area aren’t thriving. Students read Walk in the Woods and learn how an ecologist looks at decomposers in a real ecosystem; they read about the role of decomposers in putting nutrients into the soil. Through analyzing data and reading the reference book Restoration Case Studies, students learn that plants get nutrients from the soil and that these nutrients are critical for the health of plants. Students then independently write their final arguments about how to address the problem that the plants aren’t growing and thriving in this part of the rain forest.