The class designs a mural of a local ecosystem and prepares a mini-ecosystem, using plastic bottles, which will also be used in Lesson 6. Each cooperative group places a population of organisms in the habitat bottle they prepared in Lesson 3. Students observe several organisms of the same species and identify some of the ways individuals within the population are diverse. Students participate in an activity using different colored dots to observe the importance of variations within a species. They compare the species' diversity in three areas on their school grounds.
Students locate examples of species' diversity in their community.
Cooperative groups build a structure from toothpicks to model stability. Cooperative groups make blocks from small milk cartons and together, as a class, they design a food pyramid. They participate in both a demonstration and a relay to show that energy is lost when it is transferred from producers to consumers. Students list different ways that living things can depend on one another. Students go outside and identify an organism's relationships to other living things.