Digital Unit Plan – Goals, Objectives and Assessments

Unit Title: Earth, Ecosystems, & Human Activity Name: Emily Bertrand, Henry Chi, Erin Crowley

Content Area: Foundational Level Grade Level: 6-8

Next Generation Science Standards/Performance Expectations

MS-LS2-1.
Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of
organisms in an ecosystem
MS-LS2-2.
Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems.
MS-ESS2-2.
Construct an explanation based on evidence for how geoscience processes have changed Earth's surface at varying
time and spatial scales.
MS-ESS2-3.
Analyze and interpret data on the distribution of fossils and rocks, continental shapes, and seafloor structures to
provide evidence of the past plate motions.
MS-ESS3-1.
Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how the uneven distributions of Earth's mineral, energy, and
groundwater resources are the result of past and current geoscience processes.

Anchoring Activity

What are factors in the environment that might cause a population to decline?

Unit Situation: You are a park ranger at Yosemite National Park, you notice that the wovlerines population is slowly declining.
You want to help, but are unsure how to approach the situation. You look to reference previous cases to help you understand
what you can do to help. Grizzly bears have had similar path to where the black bear is heading, so you research the grizzly
bear’s history, resources, etc. With the information learned about the grizzly bear elimination in CA, you create a plan to help
save the black bears.
- Explore on google Earth
- Explore on national park services

Driving Question of the Unit

Driving Question: Why are there no Grizzly bears in CA?

Unit Goals---Describe what you want students to be able to do. For example, I wanted my students to be able to know
when to use the epistemic practices when I gave them verbal or visual cues. Students will need to be able to recognize
science even if it is not in the verbal form. See the article “Outside the Pipeline: Reimagining Science Education for
Nonscientists. A summary of the article is in the appendix of this unit plan template.
What do you want students to understand?
How Earth’s resources are formed, how organisms use resources in their environment impacts other organisms. The cause and
effect relationships of human impacts when using Earth’s resources.

What do you want them to be able to do?

Inquire, Model, Analyze, Argue

Why is this important for students to learn?

Students will understand how their own individual actions and use of resources impact their community; understanding of
cause and effect relationships of real world problems.

What scientific community goals can you connect the answers to the above questions to?
Environment awareness, cause and effect relationships, conservation efforts, current community issues

Lesson 1 – [Pangea, Plate Tectonics, Fossils]

Student Learning Objective: Acceptable Evidence – Formative and/or Summative Assessment:

Using and interpreting maps of Earth’s plate
movement and fossil data, students will
construct an initial argument of how
ancestors of grizzly bears migrated to
US/California.
Initial CER including some form of drawing of Pangea with original bear
locations versus current continent locations (showing movement)
Model regarding plate tectonics

Lesson 2 – [Interactions among organisms]

Student Learning Objective: Acceptable Evidence – Formative and/or Summative Assessment:

Using and interpreting data from Yosemite
National Park, students shall work in groups
to identify patterns of interaction among
animals such as the pronghorn, elk, cutthroat
trout, bear, bobcat and deer mouse and find
casual relationships within ecosystems such
as competition, predation, and mutualism.
Students add to their CER, including the relationships grizzly bears have had
with other organisms and how those interactions may have had an affect on
their resource availability. Students include a food web showing the correct
relationships between the species listed in the objective. Students express
understanding that resource availability can affect interactions between
organisms.

Lesson 3 – [Ecosystems/Ecosystem Interactions]

Student Learning Objective: Acceptable Evidence – Formative and/or Summative Assessment:

Students will analyze and interpret data
(graphs and charts) from Yosemite National
Park of a endangered species’s change of
population over time and will determine the
relationships between the size of population,
resource availability and survival of
organisms. Students will be able to explain
that resources are finite and over
consumption can lead to population decline.
Students add to their CER how changes in the availability of resources -such as
less food from competition with other organisms- relates to the population
growth of grizzly bears. Students can express the cause and effect relationships
between a food resource, growth of individual organisms, and population size
of a species. For example: Cause and effect relationship if one species from the
grizzly bear’s food web were to disappear.
To illustrate the effects of prey camouflage, students will be conducting a
predator/prey lab using skittles and colored paper.

Lesson 4 - [Human Activity and How We Use Energy]

Student Learning Objective:
Students will analyze history events of
human use of resources such as energy and
minerals. Students will analyze historical
energy events and determine the United
States current energy use. Students will
analyze the historical events of gold mining
to determine consequences to the natural
environment. Students can explain how
depletion of a resource by humans changes
how much and where more of that resource
can be found.
Acceptable Evidence – Formative and/or Summative Assessment:
Through jigsaw reading, students will create a concept map showing our energy
use within the three categories of “home, industry, and transportation.” They
will also write a one sentence summary of the most important energy statistic
learned.
Students will be assigned an energy source and will complete an argument
paragraph using evidence found through energy history investigations. The
paragraph will argue a claim about why the history of their assigned energy is
important to understand. Students with similar energy sources are able to
collaborate on ideas, but everyone writes their paragraph individually.
Students will add to their CER how human depletion of gold during the gold
rush drove miners to California where they encroached on grizzly bear habitat
and used grizzly bears as a resource. Students can reason and state examples of
how the use of resources by humans decreases the amount of these resource
available and changes overall distribution of resource on Earth.

Lesson 5 - [What Is Your Impact?]

Student Learning Objective: Acceptable Evidence – Formative and/or Summative Assessment:

Using all of the information collected Final CER/Model (CER from initial lesson is edited with more accurate
throughout the unit, students will be able to evidence & Model is finalized)
explain why there are no more grizzly bears
in CA, and how this data can be used to
save the black bears.

Unit Summative Assessment

Students are able to make a final CER to explain how there are no more Grizzlies in California. Their model should include
supporting evidence of how Grizzlies arrived to California, how bears interact with their environment and other organisms,
what resources they use, and the effects the Gold rush on Grizzly populations.

Google docs Final Unit Exam (Multiple Choice and short answer)
Presentation project based on CER

Useful Websites:

https://youtu.be/IgQDinouNmY

https://visityellowstonenationalparkyall.weebly.com/yellowstones-wildlife.html

https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/animals.htm

https://betterlesson.com/lesson/632584/energy-history?from=cc_lesson (Energy Lesson)

Threatened animals https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/threatened-mammals.htm

https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2016/10/us-fish-and-wildlife-service-reconsider-wolverine-esa-protections More
wolverine stuff