Download Interactions with Ecosystems

Fifth Grade Science
2nd Grading Period (3-4 weeks)
Academic Vocabulary:
Power Objectives:
• Explain how organisms perform a variety of roles in
an ecosystem. (P.O. #6)
• Understand that all of the processes that take place
within organisms require energy. (P.O. #7)
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ecosystem
organism
population
food chain
food web
producer
consumer
decomposer
omnivore
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carnivore
herbivore
photosynthesis
energy
symbiotic
relationships
mutualism
commensalism
parasitism
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species
endangered
species
threatened
species
invasive species
remediation
habitat
Interactions with Ecosystems
Enduring Understandings:
Essential Questions:
• Organisms perform a variety of roles in an ecosystem.
• Populations of organisms can be categorized by how
they acquire energy.
• Food webs can be used to identify the relationships
among producers, consumers and decomposers in an
ecosystem.
• All of the processes that take place within organisms
require energy.
• See below for additional enduring understandings.
• What would happen with removal or introduction of
one kind of living thing (e.g., one species of producers
not all producers)?
• What would happen if one factor of the environment
changes (e.g., temperature increased or decreased,
higher intensity of sunlight)?
Enduring Understandings:
• For ecosystems, the major source of energy is sunlight.
• Energy entering ecosystems as sunlight is transferred and transformed by producers into energy that organisms use
through the process of photosynthesis. That energy then passes from organism to organism as illustrated in food webs.
• In most ecosystems, energy derived from the sun is transferred and transformed into energy that organisms use by the
process of photosynthesis in plants and other photosynthetic organisms.