How to "Unjumble" Your Ecology Unit

I don't know about you, but our Ecology could easily take 6-8 weeks to teach, it covers such a large, wide-range of content that I often find it overwhelming, even though it is always considered the "easiest" of all the units. I needed to find a way to teach the highlights, teach it so the unit built on top of each other and flowed, and do it in 3 weeks.

Last summer I sat down and looked through different textbooks, other teacher's pacing guides, standards, and various pacing calendars and documents. I ultimately decided to treat Ecology like many of us treat our entire course: break the unit and work micro to macro. So here is what my flow looks like now. I will make a post with different lessons sometime in the near future!

Species --> Population-->Community-->Ecosystem

I know....this is like well of course, duh! This is exactly how you should teach it. I always had a list of things to do and I felt like I just checked them off...teach food chains, then predator-prey, then invasive species, next succession, etc. It never flowed. So I did my best to create a unit that built on itself as we moved through.

Here is a look at the breakdown of how each of these look from a lesson standpoint.

1-2 days: What is a species?

We spend the day first learning what a species, how can species evolve from one another, and how reproductive barriers are part of that process.

3-4 days: What are populations? How do populations grow?

Next, we move on to how groups of species, living in the same place, at the same time create populations. Using POGILS, we discuss the models of population growth: how populations increase/decrease, survivorship curve, and logistic vs exponential growth. Then we spend a few days completing labs/activities that represent these different models.

2-3 days: What is a community? How do organisms interact with one another?

Now it's time to discuss relationships. Once we know what populations are, we can look at how different populations form a community and the relationships that are creating through these interactions. We usually spend one day going over symbiotic relationships using a card sort, and then look at predator/prey graphs. If we have time, we like to do a predator/prey lab. Next we look at niche partitioning/competition with a resource I found on HHMI. Lastly, we end this section by looking at this cartoon and then discuss limiting factors by completing an activity called "The Ups and Downs of Populations." Students draw cards and the population sizes change based on particular factors. They keep track of populations sizes and graph the information. This is a great transition into ecosystems, because we discuss abiotic factors, as well as how competition from other populations can effect population sizes.

2-3 days: What is an ecosystem? How do energy/resources flow through ecosystems? How do humans impact ecosystems?

Lastly, we look at how energy/resources move through ecosystems. I use a lab called Energy Dilution Lab to help students see how energy is transferred from organism to organism. We discuss the 10% rule and review food chain vocabulary. Then we do trophic cascades with HHMI resources. Lastly, we do human impact and learn about invasive species. Students wrap it up by creating horror movie posters about a given species. This is a pretty fun assignment and it usually falls in October so has a sort of Halloween feel to it.

It is by no means perfect. I re-evaluate this unit more than any other because I think there is always room for improvement. However, at the end of the year, this is the students favorite unit. They really enjoy all the labs, case studies, and discussions.

If you are struggling with organizing your ecology unit, I hope this helps. I know we left out some topics that other schools may want to add, like Nitrogen and Phosphorous cycle, primary/secondary succession, and I am sure some others. We used to teach this in depth, but if I am being honest, it gets hard to "cram" it all in and so we pick and choose our battles with certain topics. That is the life of a teacher, do what is best for your students with the time and resources you are given!

I hope to create more posts about each lesson or group of lessons with resources soon. Leave a comment if you want to see particular section turned into a separate blog post!

Happy Teaching!