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Soil Food Web - Lesson #2

Lesson Details


Subject: Science
Learning Level: High School
Author(s): LeeAnn Vaughan, Melinda Chardeen, Jenny Enslin
Submitted by:

Abstract

This lesson will allow students to explore the interdependence of food webs. The activities will include designing a food web and working in cooperative gorups. Students will design a food web on the computer and explain how this web is interdependent. Students will also search for a current event focusing on how humans impact our envirnonment. Then, students will work in cooperative groups sharing their current events and how their article could be related to the food webs they discussed earlier. Students will end this lesson with a class discussion on their individual group findings.

Lesson fundamental understandings:
Essential Questions:

Understanding:
All food webs are interrelated.

Essential Questions:
What would be included in a soil food web?
How are all food webs interrelated?

Standards

National Standards

Life Science: Interdependence of organisms Human beings live within the world's ecosystems. Increasingly, humans modify ecosystems as a result of population growth, technology, and consumption. Human destruction of habitats through direct harvesting, pollution, atmospheric changes, and other factors is threatening. Current global stability, and if not addressed, ecosystems will be irreversibly affected. Technology Standards: Technology research tools Information Literacy Standards: Information literacy Social Responsibility

State Standards

Florida: (SC.G.2.4.6) The student knows the ways in which humans today are placing their environment support systems at risk. Nebraska: (12.4.4) Investigate and describe how humans modify the ecosystem as a result of population growth, technology, and consumption.


Lesson

Prerequisite Skills

Basic understanding of food webs.

Teacher Information/Situations/Setting/Time

Time frame: 1 90-minute block or 2 45/50 minute class periods.
Materials: Software such as Inspiration to construct a food web on the computer and sterile containers to collect soil samples.

Assessment

Grading the food webs that were constrcuted on the computer.
Participation in group/class discussions

Student Activity/Tasks

1. Engage students in a class discussion on soil food webs. Ask the students how all food webs, including soil food webs, are interrelated. The teacher will design a food web on the board and explain how it is interrelated.

2. After explaining about the soil web, have the students write a journal entry answering the question, "What would happen to an ecosystem if the soil web was destroyed?" Encourage students to write an uninterupted 5 minutes.

3. Instuct the students to construct a food web using computer software (Inspiration). If this software or if computers are unavaliable, then have the students design a food web on poster boards.

4. At the end of the 1st 45/50-minute period, assign a homework assignmnet. Tell the students to locate a current event focusing on how humans impact our environment.

5. In the beginning of the 2nd 45/50-minute class period, divide the class into groups of three. For each group, assign a leader, recorder, and a spoksperson. Tell the students to discuss the current events they found and to explain how it demonstartes the impact humans have on the environment.

6. Once the students have discussed the human impacts in their groups, tell them to see if they can connect the information they learned from their current event with the food web they designed the day before. Ask them, "How can humans positively or negatively impact food webs."

7. After the group discussions, conduct a whole-class discussion focusing on their findings each group discovered. Have the spokesperson from each group highlight their findings.
8. At the end of the class period, assign a homework assignment. Tell the students to collect a soil sample from their backyard to bring to class for the next day.

Enrichment/Alternate Activity:

Students can consruct a power point presentation of thier findings.

Cross-Curricular:

Technology Requirements/Tools/Materials

Computer software such as Inspiration to construct a food web.

Acknowledgements:


Additional Resources

Main URL:

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