6th Grade Science Guide

6.4: Ecosystems 3 Dimensions & Progressions

Unit 5

DIFFERENTIATION IN ACTION

Skill Building

Play the game “Oh Deer” from Project Wild. Change each round of the game to show how resource limitations impact populations. For instance, for 1 round, tell students there was a drought, and decrease the number of water cards in the simulation. Run the simulation and have students record the number of surviving animals. Then choose to run the simulation with limits to other resources in other rounds. Students read the article “Loss of large predators has caused widespread disruption of ecosystems”. Students then choose one of the examples used in the paper to do further research about how the loss of large predators infuenced an ecosystem. Examples include: ● Reduction of lions and leopards in Africa and how it impacted the behavior of olive baboons leading to interstitial parasites in humans. ● Decimation of sharks caused an outbreak of cow-nosed rays and the collapse of shellfsh. ● Rinderpest Epidemic decimated the wildebeest resulting in more woody vegetation and increased wildfres.

Extension

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

● 6.4.1 Formative Assessment

ELA CONNECTIONS

● Cite specifc textual evidence to support analysis of science and technical texts.

MATH CONNECTIONS

● Integrate quantitative or technical information expressed in words in a text with a version of that information expressed visually (e.g., in a fowchart, diagram, model, graph, or table).