KY SCIENCE STANDARDS

Disciplinary Code Ideas

LS2.A: Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems

• Organisms, and populations of organisms, are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors. (MS-LS2-1)

• In any ecosystem, organisms and populations with similar requirements for food, water, oxygen, or other resources may compete with each other for limited resources, access to which consequently constrains their growth and reproduction. (MS-LS2-1)

• Growth of organisms and population increases are limited by access to resources. (MS-LS2-1)

• Similarly, predatory interactions may reduce the number of organisms or eliminate whole populations of organisms. Mutually beneficial interactions, in contrast, may become so interdependent that each organism requires the other for survival. Although the species involved in these competitive, predatory, and mutually beneficial interactions vary across ecosystems, the patterns of interactions of organisms with their environments, both living and nonliving, are shared. (MS-LS2-2)

LS2.B: Cycle of Matter and Energy Transfer in Ecosystems

• Food webs are models that demonstrate how matter and energy is transferred between producers, consumers, and decomposers as the three groups interact within an ecosystem. Transfers of matter into and out of the physical environment occur at every level. Decomposers recycle nutrients from dead plant or animal matter back to the soil in terrestrial environments or to the water in aquatic environments. The atoms that make up the organisms in an ecosystem are cycled repeatedly between the living and nonliving parts of the ecosystem. (MS-LS2-3)

PS1B: Chemical Reactions

• Each pure substance has characteristic physical and chemical properties (for any bulk quantity under given conditions) that can be used to identify it. (MS-PS1-3)

Cross Cutting Concepts

• Patterns can be used to identify cause and effect relationships (MS-LS2-2)

• Cause and effect relationships may be used to predict phenomena in natural or designed systems. (MS-LS2-1)

• The transfer of energy can be tracked as energy flows through a natural system. (MS-LS2-3)

• Engineering advances have led to important discoveries in virtually every field of science, and scientific discoveries have led to the development of entire industries and engineered systems. (MS-PS1-3)

NGSS STANDARDS and Learning Targets

LS2-1. Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.

LS2-2. Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems.

LS2-3. Develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem.

PS1-3. Gather and make sense of information to describe that synthetic materials come from natural resources and impact society.

ETS1-2.Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.

LS 2-1

• I can predict how organisms and populations of organisms are dependent upon environmental interactions and resources.

LS 2-2

• I can use patterns of relationships across ecosystems to predict interactions between organisms and abiotic components of natural systems.

LS 2-3

• I can use a model to track how matter and energy is transferred through a natural system.

ETS 1-2

• I can evaluate competing design solutions to determine how well they solve a problem.

PS 1-3

• I can investigate how synthetic materials are made from natural resources and the human impact on natural systems from the creation of these synthetics.