Backwards Design Lesson Plan - Ecosystems

Name: Elizabeth Flaherty Subject/Course: What is Alive?

Topic: Ecosystems Grade Level: 6-9
Desired Results
Established Goal(s)/Target(s)—What will students know and be able to do
- The students will be able to understand and define an ecosystem by describing and
identifying the main components such as consumers, producers, predators, and
decomposers.
- Students will be able to describe relationships between consumers, producers, predators,
and decomposers.
- Students will be able to describe the relationships of populations of organisms with the
biotic and abiotic elements of their environment.
- Students will be able to describe the interrelationships among populations of organisms in
an ecosystem.
- Students will make hypotheses and test these hypotheses.
- Students will present findings from their hypothesis tests by entering data into Excel and
create graphs and figures.

Standards covered:
Systems, classification, order and organization

Benchmarks:
8.1.6. Interrelationships of Populations and Ecosystems: Students illustrate populations of
organisms and their interconnection within an ecosystem, identifying relationships among
producers, consumers, and decomposers.

8.2.1. Students research scientific information and present findings through appropriate means.

8.2.2. Students use inquiry to conduct scientific investigations

 Ask questions that lead to conducting an investigation.
 Collect, organize, and analyze and appropriately represent data.
 Draw conclusions based on evidence and make connections to applied scientific concepts.
 Clearly and accurately communicate the result of the investigation.

8.2.3. Students clearly and accurately communicate the result of their own work as well as
information from other sources.

8.2.3. Students explore how scientific information is used to make decisions.

 The role of science in solving personal, local, and national problems.
 Interdisciplinary connection of the sciences and connections to other subject areas and
careers in science or technical fields.
 Origins and conservation of natural resources, including Wyoming examples.
 Assessment Evidence
What is your evidence of Learning:
- The students will complete assessment activities at the end of each lesson. In addition,
the second activity is an assessment.
- The final activity will allow students to use the information presented in the previous four
lessons. This will also be the final assessment for this learning module.
Ecosystems
Learning Module 1: Engage

What is alive in an ecosystem?

Objectives: The students will be introduced to the topic of ecosystems.

Materials and Preparation:

- Worksheet for Activity 1
- Lesson 1 Assessment worksheet

Background Information:

These terms are defined by Stiling (1999) as:

Ecosystem is a biotic community and its abiotic environment.

Producers: a green plant that converts light or chemical energy into organismal tissue.

Consumers: organisms that obtain energy from the organic materials of other organisms both
living and dead.

Decomposers: consumers, especially microbial consumers, that change their organic food
into mineral nutrients.

Predators: organisms (predators) consume another organism (prey).

Stiling. P. 1999. Ecology: theories and applications. Third Edition. Prentice Hall. Upper Sadle
River, New Jersey. 638 pp.

Trophic cascades: interactions between trophic levels (decomposer, producer, herbivore,

predator) that result in inverse patterns in abundance or biomass across more than one
trophic link in a food web.

Detailed description of the activities…

Activity 1: Students will create a list of all of the things they need to survive, the forces of
nature that affect their everyday life, and the other organisms they might interact with. A
worksheet will be provided that will direct this thought process. 10 minutes.

Activity 2: As a class, the students will now make a list of the elements of the Wyoming
ecosystem. The list will be recorded on the chalk board. They should be encouraged to
include the fungi, plants, animals (invertebrates, mammals – including humans, herpetiles,
birds), elements of the environment (climate), and anything else they may want to include.

Activity 3: The definitions for producers, consumers, decomposers, and predators will now be
introduced and the students will separate the listed elements of the Wyoming ecosystem into
these groups. The concept of tropic cascades will also be introduced and discussed.
Students have a worksheet to help illustrate this concept. The students will separate the
listed elements of the Wyoming ecosystem into these groups and create their own example
of a potential trophic cascade in Wyoming. After making this organized list of Wyoming’s
ecosystem components, students individually will write on a piece of paper the effects that
could happen if a component was removed from the Wyoming ecosystem. Then students
will be paired up to explain what would happen to a partner, or a number of partners.

Activity 4: Assessment. Students will be given a short description of a portion of the South
American rainforest ecosystem and instructed to determine the producers, consumers,
predators, and decomposers. Then will also create an example of a trophic cascade using
these information.
Ecosystems
Learning Module 2: Explore

Informal Assessment - Extension of Lesson 1

Objectives: The students will be visit stations placed throughout the room and answer
questions to identify the organisms at each station as the various players in an ecosystem, as
well as their (producers, consumers, predators, decomposers). The stations will include
photographs and/or skulls of the organisms in a specific ecosystem; either Desert or
Coniferous forest.

Materials and Preparation:

- Skulls showing teeth – Available through loan from the University of Wyoming
Graduate School.
 American black bear (Ursus americanus)
 Pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana)
 Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum)
 Sea otter (Enhydra lutris)
- Photographs – some photos available in a PowerPoint file attached. Other can easily
be obtained from Animal Diversity Web
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/index.html
- Station questions - Attached
- Student answer sheets - Attached

Detailed description of the activities…

Activity 1: Students will be free to move around the room to pre-established stations that will
contain a skull or photograph. At each station, the students will be prompted to determine
whether this organism is a producer, consumer, predator, or decomposer. They will also be
asked to identify or propose another organism that the one at the station may interact with
in the ecosystem and to describe that potential interaction.

Activity 2: Review of material. The teacher can ask the students to choose a few skulls and a
few photos at the stations and ask students to discuss why they made their specific choices.

Note: There are more photographs/skulls than stations noted here. A teacher could easily
put out more stations and ask students to simply answer the following questions: A) Is it a
predator, herbivore, etc., B) Why do you think so? C) Describe another organism in the
ecosystem this one would interact with and why.
Ecosystems
Learning Module 3 and 4: Explain and Elaborate

Optional - Research on Group Ecosystems

Objectives: The students will be able to use the internet to gather information related to
their ecosystem. Specific ecosystems have been chosen and will be assigned to student
groups. The students will receive a brief description of their ecosystem including some of the
major organisms that they should include in their research. During this information
gathering, students will establish the decomposers, producers, consumers, and predators for
their ecosystem. The students will then write testable hypotheses and try to predict what
will happen if they change populations and what possible trends of change they might see.
Finally, the students will create figures describing their results for the presentations.

Materials and Preparation:

- Hand-outs with background information with directions/ideas for the students’
literature research.

Detailed description of the activities…

Activity 1: Informational research on the students’ ecosystems. Students will be broken
down into groups of two or three. All the available ecosystems can either be written on the
board for students to choose, can be assigned, drawn from a hat, or the students can choose
their own ecosystems,etc. Once the ecosystems have been chosen/assigned, students will
receive the initial information and will have the opportunity to conduct their own information
search on the internet or in the library. The information that the students need to collect
should include population numbers, interactions with other species (What do they eat?
Where do they live? Are they endangered?), and their general ecology. These questions are
provided on a worksheet that will help direct the literature search.

Activity 2: Students will create hypotheses to make predictions about the outcome of a
change in one or more of the organisms in their ecosystem. They may also create
hypotheses about the outcome of a change in the abiotic characteristics of the ecosystem.

Activity 3: Students will use information collected from the internet or library to attempt to
either support or refute their hypotheses.

Activity 4: Students will present their findings to the class in either a science fair board or
PowerPoint format.
Ecosystems
Learning Module 3: Elaborate

Career Pipeline – Ecosystem Management

Objectives: A guest lecturer will present a real scenario of ecosystem management and
solicit conclusions from the class while using the vocabulary of this unit, discussing the
interrelationships among the organisms in the ecosystem, and discussing the use of methods
for hypothesis testing.

Materials and Preparation:

- Guest lecturer

Background Information: Teachers are encouraged to contact Dr. Merav Ben-David at the
University of Wyoming, Department of Zoology and Physiology at 307-766-5307 or
bendavid@uwyo.edu (email is likely best). She will likely arrange to have one of her
graduate students speak.

Detailed description of the activities…

Activity 1: Students will be exposed to real life ecosystem management. The guest speaker
will present research on ecosystem management using real scenarios and will solicit
conclusions from the students. The speaker will also describe their role as a scientist. The
speaker will discuss methods used in ecosystem management to assess working hypotheses
and how they initially identified these hypotheses. The students will be encouraged to ask
questions about their work, ecosystem management, and the career of a scientist. The
students could identify vocabulary previously used in the classroom as the discussion ensues.
When the speaker uses a word the students have recently learned they could all yell out
loud, or simply write it down… Although this could overpower the message of the speaker, it
could provide focus and connection on the part of the students (teacher discretion). If this is
part of the activity, please warn the speaker!
Ecosystems
Learning Module 4: Explain

Changes in the coastal Alaskan ecosystem

Objectives: The students will be able to see both visual changes and numerical changes in
a real example of an ecosystem that is currently experiencing changes among the biotic
members.

Materials and Preparation:

- Read the following paper prior to the activity:
Estes, J.A., M.T. Tinker, T.M. Williams, and D.F. Doak. 1998. Killer whale predation on sea
otters linking oceanic and nearshore ecosystems. Science 282: 473-476.
- Power Point presentation “Killer whale predation on sea otters: how predation can
cause major changes in an ecosystem”
**- Photos for Activity 1 are slides 9 and 10 in killer whale/sea otter presentation
- Excel activity – Worksheet.

Background Information: Estes et al. 1998.

Abstract:
After nearly a century of recovery from overhunting, sea otter populations are in abrupt
decline over large areas of western Alaska. Increased killer whale predation is the likely
cause of these declines. Elevated sea urchin density and the consequent deforestation of kelp
beds in the nearshore community demonstrate that the otter’s keystone role has been
reduced or eliminated. This chain of interactions was probably initiated by anthropogenic
changes in the offshore oceanic ecosystem.

Detailed description of the activities…

Activity 1: Students will look at two photographs of the same site at different times. The
photographs show a kelp bed and coastal habitat before and after the killer whales began
focusing their predation on sea otters. The before photo clearly shows large kelp while the
second photo shows the newly formed urchin barrens. The students will write conclusions
about the differences between the two habitats. The following questions can be presented
to prompt the students:
- What do you see?
- What do you think happened?
- What is different between the two photographs?
- What have you learned that would explain the differences you saw?

Activity 2: Students will graph sea otter data to learn how to use Excel and to learn to
visualize data. This will prepare students for the graphed data in Activity 3. The students
will need to open Excel on a computer and then follow the instructions on the worksheet to
graph the data. This can be done as a class or individually.

Activity 3: Students will watch a power point presentation that gives the history of the orca,
sea otter, urchin, kelp bed story. This will include photographs and basic graphs of the story.
Copies of the actual graphs and figures from the scientific manuscript will be handed out and
the students will work through understanding these graphs and figures with the teachers.
This will allow students to follow the changes in the ecosystem over time and see the affects
of disturbance on an ecosystem.
Unit Title
Learning Module 5: Evaluate

Assessment of Ecosystem material

Objectives: Options:
- Students will create their own ecosystems and describe the organisms as either
predators, producers, consumers, or decomposers and the relationships between
these organisms. The students will then need to describe a disturbance that happens
to their ecosystem and the potential affects.
Or……….
- Students will make predictions about what will happen to a specific ecosystem if a
discount mega-store is built on the site and make conclusions about whether the
construction should or should not happen.

Materials and Preparation:

- Background information/worksheet for the students if they choose the Mega-Store
scenario.
o Assessment Activity Lesson 5 Ecosystem Mngt.
- Students may need access to the internet or another resource (teacher’s discretion)
- Assessment Activity Lesson 5 Ecosystem Mngt. B worksheet for the “create your own
ecosystem” activity

Background Information:
- In both activities, the students will need to identify the organisms in their ecosystem.
They will need to identify these organisms by describing them as predators,
producers, consumers, or decomposers. Then will then need to describe the
relationships these organisms have with the other organisms in that ecosystem.
Finally, the students will need to make predictions about what will happen to these
organisms when a disturbance (either of their choice or when a large mega-store is
built on their site) occurs.

Detailed description of the activities…

Activity 1: Students will have time to examine a question about a Mega-Store that has been
proposed to be built at a specific location. The students will answer questions and make
hypotheses from the standpoint of an ecosystem manager about whether the Mega-Store
should be built. They will conclude by giving “recommendations” to the builders and
planners.

- OR-

Activity 2: Students will design their own fictional ecosystem. They will be encouraged to
identify the players in the ecosystem using the vocabulary they have been using for the last
week. They will also be encouraged to describe the potential relationships between the
organisms. They will be assessed on whether this ecosystem contains producers, consumers,
predators, and decomposers and the potential relationships between these organisms. Then
the students will need to describe a disturbance and the results and affects of this
disturbance on the organisms and the relationships within this ecosystem.