Grade 5 Science – Unit 2: Ecosystems

Exploring the Living World Around Us

In Unit 2, our fifth-grade scientists are exploring ecosystems and discovering how living and nonliving things interact to support life.

Students are learning that an ecosystem includes plants, animals, microorganisms, water, sunlight, air, soil, and other environmental factors. Every part of an ecosystem plays an important role, and changes to one part can affect many others.

Throughout this unit, students will develop their scientific thinking skills by observing, asking questions, constructing models, analyzing evidence, and explaining relationships in nature.

What Will Students Learn?

Our learning focuses on several important scientific concepts:

• Living and Nonliving Things: Identifying biotic (living) and abiotic (nonliving) components of ecosystems.

• Interactions Within Ecosystems: Understanding how organisms depend on water, sunlight, air, food, shelter, and other resources.

• Plant Structures and Functions: Exploring how roots, stems, and leaves work together to help plants survive and grow.

• Energy in Ecosystems: Investigating how energy from the Sun supports plants and moves through food chains and food webs.

• Changes in Ecosystems: Examining how changes in environmental conditions can affect the survival of organisms.

• Scientific Models: Creating and evaluating models that demonstrate relationships within ecosystems.

What Will Students Be Doing?

Science instruction includes informational reading, vocabulary development, classroom discussions, hands-on investigations, and problem-solving activities.

Students will:

• Classify living and nonliving components of ecosystems.

• Construct diagrams and models of ecosystem interactions.

• Investigate how plants and animals depend on their environments.

• Explore pond, forest, garden, and agricultural ecosystems.

• Use evidence to explain what might happen when an ecosystem changes.

• Practice communicating scientific ideas using appropriate vocabulary.

Our goal is for students to move beyond memorizing scientific facts and begin thinking and reasoning like scientists.

How Can Families Support Learning at Home?

You do not need special equipment to help your child develop scientific thinking skills!

Take a walk outside, observe a garden, look at a pond, or investigate the plants and animals around your home.

Try asking your child:

1. What living and nonliving things can you identify?

2. How do the living things depend on their environment?

3. What might happen if this ecosystem received very little rain?

4. How do plants help other organisms survive?

5. What evidence supports your explanation?

Encourage your child to explain why something happens rather than simply identifying what happens.

Our Learning Goal

By the end of this unit, students should be able to explain how organisms interact with their environment, describe the movement of energy through ecosystems, and use scientific evidence and models to support their explanations.

Our guiding question: How do living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem work together to support life?