Students examine jars containing items representing the needs of living things. They identify what it is that living things need to survive and conclude that these needs are provided in a habitat. They locate examples of habitats on the school grounds and compare their own habitat to that of a plant or a wild animal. Students read or perform a play about the components of an ecosystem and identify them on a transparency of a grassland. Cooperative groups design a mural of their selected ecosystem and identify some of its components.
Students make a web out of string to represent the interactions of a grassland ecosystem.
They draw and construct several food chains, and they diagram ways organisms might interact within the ecosystem they designed in Lesson 4. Students play a game to correlate certain organisms with their niches. They categorize organisms as producers, consumers, scavengers, and decomposers. They identify the niches of some organisms found on the school grounds. To obtain information and prepare for Lesson 16, cooperative groups write letters to organizations concerned with the natural environment.