What Did You Eat Today?

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What Did You Eat Today?

• Fourth Grade Life Science Unit

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Content Standard

• S4L1. Students will describe the roles of
  organisms and the flow of energy within an
  ecosystem.
• Identify the roles of producers, consumers, and
  decomposers in a community.
• Demonstrate the flow of energy through a food
  web/food chain beginning with sunlight and
  including producers, consumers, and decomposers.
• Predict how changes in the environment would
  affect a community (ecosystem) of organisms.
• Predict effects on a population if some of the
  plants or animals in the community are scarce or
  if there are too many.

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Big Ideas

• Ecosystem
• Roles

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Related Content

• S4L2. Students will identify factors that affect
  the survival or extinction of organisms such as
  adaptation, variation of behaviors (hibernation)
  and external features (camouflage and
  protection).
• Identify factors that may have lead to the
  extinction of some organisms.

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How Students Learn Science

• S4CS3. Students will use tools and instruments
  for observing, measuring, and manipulating
  objects in scientific activities utilizing safe
  laboratory procedures.
• Use computers, cameras and recording devices for
  capturing information.
• S4CS4. Students will use ideas of system, model,
  change, and scale in exploring scientific and
  technological matters.
• Observe and describe how parts influence one
  another in things with many parts.
• Identify patterns of change in thingssuch as
  steady, repetitive, or irregular changeusing
  records, tables, or graphs of measurements where
  appropriate.
• S4CS5. Students will communicate scientific
  ideas and activities clearly.
• Make sketches to aid in explaining scientific
  procedures or ideas.
• Use numerical data in describing and comparing
  objects and events.
• S3CS8. Students will understand important
  features of the process of scientific inquiry.
• Students will apply the following to inquiry
  learning practices
• Scientific investigations may take many different
  forms, including observing what things are like
  or what is happening somewhere, collecting
  specimens for analysis, and doing experiments.
• Clear and active communication is an essential
  part of doing science. It enables scientists to
  inform others about their work, expose their
  ideas to criticism by other scientists, and stay
  informed about scientific discoveries around the
  world.

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Enduring Understandings

• Ecosystems include living and nonliving things.
• Living things depend on each other for food and
  protection.
• Living things add to and take away from an
  ecosystem.
• Almost all kinds of animals food can be traced
  back to plants.
• Some source of energy is needed for all
  organisms to stay alive and grow.
• Over the whole earth, organisms are growing,
  dying, and decaying, and new organisms are being
  produced by the old ones.
• Conditions of a particular habitat can limit what
  kinds of living things survive.
• All living things are eventually food to other
  living things. (Even predators are eaten by
  decomposers when they die.)
• Nature recycles materials in an ecosystem through
  growth, death, and decay.

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Producer-Consumer RelationshipFinding
understandings

• Take a common lunch menu cheeseburger, fries,
  and chocolate milkshake.
• On chart paper write down each of the meal items
  across the top.
• Describe what is in each part of the meal and
  where it came from.
• Trace all food items back as far as you can.
• For example, the bun is made of flour, flour is
  made of wheat, and wheat is a plant.
• Cheese is made from milk, milk is made by cows,
  cows eat grass, and grass is a plant.
• Plants are producersanything else is a
  consumer.

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Essential Questions

• What do plants eat?
• How do organisms determine what to eat?
• How would your daily actions make a difference in
  an ecosystem?
• Are you a food producer or a food consumer?

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What Students Should Know

• The correct vocabulary to use.
• The roles of organisms in a community.
• How to identify organisms for each role in a
  community.
• Recognize and identify what can affect the
  balance in an ecosystem.

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What Students Should Be Able To Do

• Observe a community over time.
• Keep a record of the number of organisms in the
  community over time.
• Make a model of a food chain.
• Make a model of a food web.

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Official Wildlife of Georgia

• Bird Brown Thrasher
• Butterfly Tiger Swallowtail
• Fish Largemouth Bass
• Flower Cherokee Rose
• Fossil Shark's Tooth
• Insect Honey Bee
• Marine Mammal Right Whale (endangered)
• Reptile Gopher Tortoise (threatened)
• Tree Live Oak

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What happens next?

• Stage 2-- Evidence
• Day 2 Focus on Balanced Assessment
• How do I know what students understand?
• How good is good enough?
• Stage 3 Unit Design
• Days 3 and 4 Focus on Instructional Decisions
  and Unit Design
• How do I provide learning opportunities?
• When do I revisit, reteach, and reinforce
  understanding?

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Previews of Coming AttractionsStage 2 Evidence
(4 types)

• Informal Assessment
• Observe students as they sort cards with
  organisms pictured on them and discuss their
  decisions.
• Have students keep an ecology journal about a
  plot on the playground.

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Selected Response

• Which list below best shows how energy moves in a
  food chain?
• Grass cows humans Sun
• Sun grass cows humans
• Humans cows grass Sun
• Cows grass Sun humans

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Selected Response

• In a food chain, the green plants are
• Producers
• Predators
• Decomposers
• Prey

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Selected Response

• Green plants Insects Frogs
  Snakes
• Frogs in the above food chain get their energy
  directly from
• Eating insects
• Being eaten by snakes
• Eating other frogs
• Eating green plants

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Selected Response

• Sun Green plants Mice
  Snakes Hawks
• Which population would most likely decrease if
  the number of mice greatly increased?
• Green plants
• Mice
• Snakes
• Hawks

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Selected Response

• If all green plants died, would foxes survive?
• Yes, foxes do not eat green plants.
• Yes, foxes could still eat other animals.
• No, the animals that foxes eat need to eat green
  plants.
• No, they would have no more plants to eat.

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Selected Response

• 11 Which picture represents a decomposer?
• 12 Which picture represents a producer?

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• The arrows show the source of energy for these
  living creatures. For example, the arrow
• pointing from the fish to the seal shows that the
  seals eat fish as a source of energy.
• 18 What do marine birds eat as a source of
  energy?
• Berries B. Fish C. Leaves D. Mushrooms
• 19 According to this diagram, what do insects and
  fish eat as a source of energy?
• A. Meat eaters B. Plant eaters C. Plants D.
  Decomposers
• 20 For a source of energy, arctic foxes eat
• A. grass. B. flowers. C. insects. D. seals.

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Constructed Response

• Choose an organism and research its life cycle
  including how it gets energy and produces energy
  for other organisms.
• Sketch an ecosystem and label the organisms as
  producers, consumers, or decomposers.
• Finish a diagram of a food web in a pond. The
  food web shows what eats what in the pond system.
  Draw arrows from each living thing to the things
  that eat it.  
• Tell why it is important for dead animals and
  plants in a pond system to be broken down.   

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Performance Assessment A

• Your group will plot a square meter in the school
  yard and record the living and non-living things
  that are found there. Keep a tally chart of the
  population information. (For example, use random
  sampling for ant colonies instead of counting all
  of the ants.)
• Sort populations by roles.
• Make a poster of a food chain or web in your
  plot.
• Make a presentation of your findings
• Brochure
• Multimedia
• Booklet
• Share your findings with other groups.
• Share your information with a group from another
  region who is doing the same project.

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Performance Assessment B

• Research a region and the organisms that live
  there. Create a visual food chain or food web
  showing the interrelationships of organisms in
  the selected ecosystem.
• Choose one major producer, consumer, or
  decomposer in the ecosystem for focus on and
  organize their food chain or web so that it shows
  how this organism is connected to other
  organisms.
• Imagine the selected organism has suddenly
  disappeared from the ecosystem
• How might the other organisms be affected?
• Do you think the food chain/ web can continue
  without this organism?
• How would you describe the relationships among
  the organisms in food chains and food webs?
• Present a visual, written, oral, or multimedia
  presentation to present to the class.

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Sample Rubric
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Instructional Decisions

• If I want students to know the roles of organisms
  in an ecosystem, what learning opportunities will
  I build into my unit plan?
• Resources and materials
• Time for students to learn (Calendar)
• Activities connected to the goal
• Different types of evidence showing student
  understanding

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Resources

• Georgia Wildlife Federation
• http//www.gwf.org
• Georgia Museum of Natural History Science Box
  Program
• http//museum.nhm.uga.edu/htmldocs/scienceboxes/sc
  ibox.asp
• Georgia Science Links
• http//www.georgiascienceteacher.org/links.htm

• Georgia Wildlife Web
• http//museum.nhm.uga.edu/gawildlife/gawwregions.h
  tml
• Georgia Learning Connections
• http//www.glc.k12.ga.us
• National Wildlife Federation
• http//www.nwf.org
• eNature
• http//www.enature.com