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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:
Related Lessons
Related Resources
Copyright © 1997-2003
Career Connection to Teaching with Technology
USDOE Technology Innovation Challenge Grant
Marshall Ransom, Project Manager
All rights reserved.
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