Week 7- Ecosystem

  What question are we investigating?

For the seventh week of Science Methods I, we would look at the questions: “How do living things interact with their environment, “How are things in our world interrelated, and “Where does living stuff come from and where does it go?”.  We did this through continuing to look at making a 2D model on ecosystems and talking about the different concepts that are able to live in it. We also would do an activity to look how the processes get less to live by looking at the plants, herbivores, and carnivorous food resources. 

What did we do in lab to investigate this question?

The teacher started this lab by asking the small groups to get their owl pellet containers so we could discuss the findings as a whole group. This would allow everyone to see the different questions that you could create for a lesson for elementary students in a future classroom. After this she would ask everyone to get out their 2D models on ecosystems and this would allow us to individually draw about different parts that go into our ecosystems. It also would help her to connect it to the new information for that class period about the things that make up an ecosystem like thinking of a community or population that could be in the ecosystems we were creating.  An example of this in my own ecosystem could be having several fishes in the drawing and this being a population within the drawing.

What did we figure out?

The last activity we would as a whole group was having the majority of people being plants, a couple of people being herbivores, and a couple of people being carnivorous. This would be shown by making the “plants” by putting lima beans into containers based on the processes they do. An example of this could be doing photosynthesis and needing to give 10 lima beans for it. Then the herbivores would come after the “plants” were done with all their lima beans in the bags. This would have similar processes that the herbivores had to do. The carnivorous would be the last to get the limo beans to do their processes. This would allow everyone to see visually how the resources are less gradually for each group of people that did the processes with the limo beans. 

What are new or remaining questions after the investigation? 

This lab taught me how to have activities that could allow the students to visually see the process of ecosystems or the resources needed for groups like the plants. That could be shown by the limo bean activity that we did as a whole group. It also would allow me to think of how gradually how a teacher could show these concepts in the classroom setting. An example of this can be the ecosystem drawing and being able to connect it to several parts that were shown in the class periods.