Students design an interrelationship map that shows the connections of some niches. Students observe a model of the water cycle. They design representations of the water and carbon cycles in plastic beverage bottles. They build a compost tube to observe part of the mineral cycle and plant bean seeds to study a life cycle. Students conduct investigations on decomposition.
Cooperative groups identify the life cycles of the organisms in habitat bottles.
Students locate organisms on the school grounds and determine the life cycle stage that the organism is in. Students identify changes that were made by a group member in their ecosystem triorama. Students conduct soil investigations and explore interrelationships, diversity, and changes present on the school grounds. They attend a field trip to an ecosystem and participate in the same investigations and exploration stations that they did on the school grounds. They compare the data gathered on the field trip to the data from the school grounds.