Objective
Students will be able to create their own food chains, food webs, and food pyramids for an ecosystem of their choice.

Big Idea
Spin your own food webs and other energy diagrams.

Objective
Students will be able to compare and contrast food chains, food webs and food pyramids.

Big Idea
It's lonely at the top of a food pyramid

Objective
Students will be able to access the foundational knowledge they need to understand energy diagrams.

Big Idea
Producer or consumer? What's the difference?

In this 6th grade Science class, students learn how to build a compost pile, learn about organisms needed for decomposition, and begin to understand the purpose of compost in the garden.

In this sixth grade science lesson, students will learn the main components of soil and discuss how soil is created in nature as well as how we can conserve it in the garden.

The Ecology Student Edition book is one of ten volumes making up the Human Biology curriculum, an interdisciplinary and inquiry-based approach to the study of life science.

This wiki page documents the Sun Curve Design Challenge, inspired by the "Sun Curve" aquaponic garden sculpture to challenge teachers and students to produce new OER materials and incorporate green design thinking into the classroom.

Meg set out to climb up and investigate the rain forest tree canopies — and to be the first scientist to do so. But she encountered challenge after challenge. Male teachers would not let her into their classrooms, the high canopy was difficult to get to, and worst of all, people were logging and clearing the forests. Meg never gave up or gave in. She studied, invented, and persevered, not only creating a future for herself as a scientist, but making sure that the rainforests had a future as well. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Your community has many different areas to explore - it might be a park, a grocery store, a forest, or an alley. For some people, it might be difficult to explore these areas because they may have differing abilities. Select one area in your community, and come up with a plan to build a way for it to be more accessible to everyone.

A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.

CK-12 Life Science Honors For Middle School covers seven units: Understanding Living Things; Cells: The Building Blocks of Life; Genetics and Evolution; Prokaryotes, Protists, Fungi, and Plants; The Animal Kingdom; The Human Body; and Ecology.

Climate change is occurring because the amounts of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse” gases in the atmosphere are increasing. In these activities, students will learn about The Carbon Cycle so that in a later lesson they will be able to explain how human activities have altered The Carbon Cycle and evaluate how these changes have led to an increase in global temperature and the subsequent consequences of global warming.

In this group of activities, students will think more deeply about the ways in which organismsinteract within communities in their ecosystems. Students will learn about different types of relationships including commensalism, mutualism, and parasitism and will role play predator/prey relationships through an interactive game. Students will also discover how energy movesthrough ecosystems via food chains and food webs and look at energy pyramids.

In this group of activities, students will investigate how nutrients and water move through ecosystems in cycles. Students will begin by investigating how carbon cycles through organisms as part of photosynthesis and cellular respiration and then through food chains. Students will discuss what happens when living things do not decompose under normal conditions and become fossilfuels. Students will then review the water cycle and discover that water connects everything inecosystems. Students will explore stories of the water cycle as told by molecules of water anddiscuss water’s importance to all living things.

The true story of how Momofuko Ando was inspired to create one of the world’s most popular foods after seeing long lines of hungry people waiting for a simple bowl of ramen following World War II. He dreamed about making a new kind of ramen noodle soup that was quick, convenient, and tasty for the hungry people because he believed that peace follows from a hungry stomach. With persistence, creativity, and a little inspiration, Ando succeeded. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Develop a food product (a new food, tool, or invention, et al) to help increase access to food in your community.

Students are introduced to our planet's structure and its dynamic system of natural forces through an examination of the natural hazards of earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, tsunamis, floods and tornados, as well as avalanches, fires, hurricanes and thunderstorms. They see how these natural events become disasters when they impact people, and how engineers help to make people safe from them. Students begin by learning about the structure of the Earth; they create clay models showing the Earth's layers, see a continental drift demo, calculate drift over time, and make fault models. They learn how earthquakes happen; they investigate the integrity of structural designs using model seismographs. Using toothpicks and mini-marshmallows, they create and test structures in a simulated earthquake on a tray of Jell-O. Students learn about the causes, composition and types of volcanoes, and watch and measure a class mock eruption demo, observing the phases that change a mountain's shape. Students learn that the different types of landslides are all are the result of gravity, friction and the materials involved. Using a small-scale model of a debris chute, they explore how landslides start in response to variables in material, slope and water content. Students learn about tsunamis, discovering what causes them and makes them so dangerous. Using a table-top-sized tsunami generator, they test how model structures of different material types fare in devastating waves. Students learn about the causes of floods, their benefits and potential for disaster. Using riverbed models made of clay in baking pans, students simulate the impact of different river volumes, floodplain terrain and levee designs in experimental trials. They learn about the basic characteristics, damage and occurrence of tornadoes, examining them closely by creating water vortices in soda bottles. They complete mock engineering analyses of tornado damage, analyze and graph US tornado damage data, and draw and present structure designs intended to withstand high winds.

OpenSciEd middle school is NGSS-aligned science curriculum. Designed for all students and teachers, OpenSciEd includes student-facing materials as well as teacher guides. As with most instructional materials, excellent professional learning for teachers should be provided. For more information in Michigan contact the Michigan Mathematics and Science Leadership Network, starrm@mimathandscience.org

Objective
Students will be able to read and understand the formula for photosynthesis.

Big Idea
A chemical equation is a model for a reaction that happens in real life.

Objective
Students will be able to discover basic ideas about photosynthesis.

Big Idea
Where does the mass of a tree come from?

Objective
Students will be able to demonstrate their understanding of food chains, food webs, and food pyramids.

Big Idea
Show what you know.

Views of the National Parks can be used in the classroom in many different ways. Most simply, it can be made available for students to explore on their own. Lesson plan available: Biodiversity Right Outside – Biodiversity is the abundance and variety of life-forms (animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms) at all levels of organization (ecosystems, species, and genes). In this activity students will learn about biodiversity, the importance of biodiversity to ecosystems, and will conduct their own biodiversity study.

This lesson focuses on the availability of freshwater on Earth. Students review the basic terms and processes associated with the water cycle, play a game to determine the percentage of the Earth’s surface covered by water, work together in groups to estimate the distribution of water in the various locations on Earth where it is found, and discover how much fresh water is available on Earth for human use.