High School: OpenSciEd Unit B.1: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, Dynamics

Listings > High School: OpenSciEd Unit B.1: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, Dynamics

OpenSciEd is a nonprofit organization that brings together educators, philanthropic organizations, curriculum developers, and professional development providers to improve science education through the development and implementation of high-quality, freely available science instructional materials. The goal of OpenSciEd is to ensure that all educators, from elementary to high school, have access to a free, coherent, rigorous, research-based set of instructional materials that will support all students in meeting the vision for science literacy described in A Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards.

Score: 8

Awarded the NGSS Design Badge

Science Discipline: Life Science, Earth and Space Science, Engineering

Length: Unit

Year Reviewed: 2023

How do ecosystems work, and how can understanding them help us protect them? Students investigate the 30 by 30 initiative, a proposal to protect 30% of US lands and waters by 2030, and the reasons humans engage in conservation. Students use the Serengeti National Park as a case study to figure out ecosystem and conservation principles and apply those understandings to conservation dilemmas in the US. 

Through investigations with complex data sets and hands-on simulations, students figure out how limiting factors impact carrying capacity, how group behavior impacts survival, and how biodiversity supports ecosystem resilience. By engaging with real-world conservation dilemmas and exploring various interest-holder perspectives, students identify the trade-offs humans make as they manage natural resources to support human society as well as the natural systems we live in.

Link to Materials

The following link will direct you to the OpenSciEd B.1 Ecosystem:Interactions, Energy, Dynamics unit: B.1 Ecosystem:Interactions, Energy, Dynamics

 

NGSS Design Badge

Awarded: Mar 12, 2023

Awarded To: OpenSciEd Unit B.1: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, Dynamics

VERIFY

The NGSS Design Badge is awarded only to the version of this unit that was reviewed. If any modifications are made to this unit, the revised version cannot be promoted as having earned the badge.

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