To obtain information and prepare for Lesson 16, cooperative groups write letters to organizations concerned with the natural environment. Students compare niches and components within an ecosystem to jobs and services in a human community. Living things have adapted to their habitats. On the school grounds, students locate animals with specific characteristics. Students also design an animal with characteristics that help it to survive in a specific ecosystem.
Students conduct some investigations about plants.
They design plants and their seeds and include characteristics that help these plants survive in a specific ecosystem. Ecosystems change because of natural causes and human alterations. Students categorize pictures from magazines according to natural changes and human-caused changes and design a group collage. Students observe areas on or near their school grounds to locate evidence of change. Once There Was a Tree , by Natalia Romanova, and The Mountain That Loved a Bird , by Alice McLerran, and then the class identifies the changes described.