So sixth graders have uncovered some pretty significant features on the sea lamprey which indicate that it quite possibly could be the predator to the trout, but what can explain what's going on from 1980 onward, when both populations seem to be in a decreasing trend?

In order to understand this, students are using a computer model with three different organisms to see how population dynamics can change as variables change.  Check out the link on your own, to see if you can make sense of what could possibly be going on!

Starting next week, I will be on maternity leave.  My blog will continue as school starts up again in the fall!

Through 6th graders' research, they are seeing how the external and internal structures of both the trout and sea lamprey could have an effect on their survival rates in the Great Lakes.  We're specifically looking at what made the sea lamprey so successful and the trout so unsuccessful.  We'll be using this data to support our claims about the relationship between the two!

After careful reflection between all the direct and indirect relationships in the Great Lakes, students have made some great inferences about the declining trout population.  Maybe it was a decrease in a producer that caused the trout's population to fall.  Or maybe it was a consumer it eats that got a disease?

But what if an invasive species, like the sea lamprey was introduced?  Students are learning more about this invasive species which entered the Great Lakes waterways in the early 1900s.  We're doing research to examine both the external and internal structures that would allow the sea lamprey to be so successful.  We're also looking at the structures of bony fish, like the perch and trout to see why they maybe we're as successful in standing up to this invasive, and quite possibly, the cause of the trout's decline in the Great Lakes.  

How are all the organisms in a food web connected?  How can we show relationships that exist, whether they are producer-consumer relationships, predator-prey relationships, or direct-indirect relationships?  We're building a model to showcase this and we're also seeing how one organism being affected can easily affect many!  We're linking our thinking to the use of technology, too! See Mrs. Brinza's example on an interactive food web in Google Slides!

Check out these students' work on creating their own interactive slides presentations!

Jalilah               Violet            Maia                Shelby          Josh         Aaron

So if plants contain food and are a food source to animals, how can it be that the trout are being affected if trout don't consume plants in the first place?

Through a reading, students uncovered that trout's food sources can be affected because of the size of the trout, the location of where they live, and the temperature in which they live.  Realizing the complicated set of relationships in an ecosystem, not every relationship between organisms is a direct one.  Many indirect relationships can affect a population's ability to survive, too.  We built an actual food web, consisting of many smaller food chains, and are slowly seeing how both direct and indirect relationships between the organisms in the Great Lakes food web could have possibly affected the trout.  Great thinking!

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.