As students try to make sense of the fluctuating trout population in this mystery affecting the Great Lakes, they're digging deeper into understanding what is in food that could have affected the population in the first place. Using various indicators for proteins, fats, sugars, and starches, students are uncovering much about food and its contents! We'll be using this information to state claims about whether various substances are foods or not! |
With much anticipation, sixth graders were introduced to the trout mystery last week, thinking about how the population could change so drastically over the course of a few decades. Working on their questioning, students thought about questions biologists would ask regarding the population that centered around four key themes: food, reproduction, other organisms and the environment. We'll be looking specifically at food right after spring break!
Sixth grade students are seeing how biologists study interactions between organisms and their environment. Biologists are also concerned with populations of organisms, and not just one specific organism within a population. As they study populations, biologists try to make sense of the changes that can occur with a population. Sixth graders worked on their questioning techniques (just like real scientists do) to uncover questions biologists would ask of a changing population. We narrowed down the categories of what would cause changes into these four factors: food, other organisms, environment, and reproduction. We're working on what types of questions biologists would ask...
We're barely a week in to our study of biology, and our driving question for the unit is focused on "Where Have All the Creatures Gone?" Throughout our unit, we will be making sense of this phenomenon by exploring five learning sets, and our first learning set will be focused on determining what can cause populations of organisms to change.
As our third unit this year progresses, we're understanding that biology looks quite different from both physics and chemistry. Since biology is the study of life, we will be looking at just that...life! We stepped outside to begin our unit by taking some field notes, looking for interactions between living organisms and their environment. Chicago weather is unpredictable...but we were able to step outside into our new school garden and find examples of interactions. Interactions can show us changes in an ecosystem and can help us make sense of these occurrences. |
Great LakesThe phenomena behind our study this unit involve events that transpired in the Great Lakes from 1930 to 1990. How great is it that we can make connections to Lake Michigan, which is so close by to our school?!?! ArchivesCategories |