How are all living things (including humans) interconnected in ecosystems on Earth?
Global Citizenship
Students will understand their place in local New Hampshire ecosystems as well as their responsibility to protect those natural areas as natural systems and other organisms help to support the human population and vice versa.
Critical Thinking
Students will think critically throughout the unit about the interactions of different organisms in the local ecosystem in addition to the interactions that humans have with their environment.
Responsibility
Students will learn to use lab equipment responsibly and safely so that the equipment can be used in the future.
What types of relationships exist in an ecosystem among living organisms?
How do scientists classify life on earth?
How are ecosystems organized?
Students should be able to classify organisms based on their taxonomy.
Students should be able to analyze and explain graphs that demonstrate the carrying capacity of an ecosystem.
Scientific Modeling - Students use scientific modeling to collaborate on a hypothesis regarding the essential question. Students use scientific models to make meaning of phenomena.
Written and Oral Discourse - Students will communicate ideas and arguments through writing and through speech
Note taking - Students write key ideas in their lab notebooks so that they may use the resource on labs and other assessments.
Analysis of Graphs and Data - Students will collect and graph data as a visual view of the results of experimentation. Students will be able to distill the main idea from a complex graph.
Research Skills - Students will use a variety of reliable scientific sources to collect data and create a visual poster to communicate the information about a chosen New Hampshire Ecosystem.
Differentiation:
Explicit instruction of expectations for answering questions in complete sentences (TTQA) on formative and summative assessments.
Explicit instruction on lab notebook setup and maintenance throughout the course.
Explicit instruction on reading articles, lab activity instructions, and textbook passages (Bold Words, Headings, Interpreting Diagrams and Charts).
Explicit instruction on how to properly analyze graphs and data tables. Students will be given strategies that help them to break down complex graphs and data tables in order to make sense of them.
Reteach and recall material during the start of the lesson prior about previous concepts in order to develop memory skills and create future study material for exams.
Review activity and instruction on how to study for closed book exams. Students draw connections between concepts through a visual web of ideas.
HS-LS2-1. Use mathematical and/or computational representations to support explanations of factors that affect carrying capacity of ecosystems at different scales.
HS-LS2-2. Use mathematical representations to support and revise explanations based on evidence about factors affecting biodiversity and populations in ecosystems of different scales.
Textbook - Miller & Levine Biology
Khan Academy
POGIL - Process-oriented guided inquiry learning
New Hampshire Fish and Game
New Hampshire Department of Natural Resources
Integrated Taxonomic Information System
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