Learning Objective
Within Virginia’s 4th grade science curriculum standards, students must understand how organisms, including humans, interact with living and nonliving things. The nature of this relationship is broken down into three sub-standards. First, students are required to understand and identify the differences between an organism, population, community, and ecosystem. Second, students must also understand the interdependencies of species within an ecosystem by studying energy flow through a food web. Third, students will need to understand how species live within specific habitats and have specific roles, or niches.3
Because my school is an International Baccalaureate (IB) school, I am required to approach our curriculum taught through the lens of global citizenship. Therefore, my class will focus on five major ecosystems seen throughout the world: oceans, rainforests, grasslands, mountains, and deserts. Although my state’s curriculum altered the ecosystem unit standards to not include a sub-standard solely dedicated to human impact, I intend to make the majority of my unit about how humans are impacting the environment.
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