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Engage your students with these 10 ecosystem project ideas for your elementary science class and grab a FREEBIE to get started!
- Nonfiction Text For Teaching Ecosystems
- Study Jams
- Ecosystems Project – Accordion Books
- Teaching Ecosystems with Food Chains
- Food Web
- Food Chain Collage
- Ecosystems Project – Changes to Ecosystems Jigsaw
- Teaching Ecosystems with Science Stations
- Ecosystems Project – Biome Posters
- Build An Ecosystem
Research is an important part of any ecosystem project and lets you incorporate informational reading and science. The books below are a few of my favorites for this ecosystem project. We use the books with interactive anchor charts like the one shown below where students write examples of producers, consumers, decomposers, herbivores, and carnivor...
Study Jams is such a great online resource! I show videos for my mini lesson all of the time, and they’re perfect for my standards! They are also short enough and interesting enough to keep my students’ attention. There are little quizzes students can take or individually as a class, and best of all-it’s free! This engaging content is great for any...
Once my students have a good general understanding of ecosystems, they create simple ecosystem books. While this isn’t a major ecosytems project, students enjoy this activity. Students fold a half sheet of construction paper into fourths. I like to cut large 12×18 construction paper in half, so students have a 6×18 sheet of paper. Then, students la...
A crafty part of the ecosystem project is when students create their own food chain. I provide students with a copy of the sun and five circles. Students draw a picture of a producer, something that gets their energy from the producer, and so on until all five circles include some plant or animal on the food chain. I like to start with food chains ...
I would LOVE to share some pictures of this ecosystems project, but I don’t like to post pictures with students, so I’ll just have to promise that this is an awesome activity for teaching ecosystems! Give each student a card like the cards below and have everyone stand in a large circle. The student who has the card should stand in the middle of th...
I use crafts very sparingly, but I absolutely could not resist these food chain collages when I was teaching ecosystems. It was so tempting to premake some templates for my students to use so everything could be nice and neat, but I wanted to give ownership to my students and to allow them to select any series of animals in a food chain. This is al...
I haven’t had a lot of success with jigsaw activities in the past, so I was a bit hesitant to try it again, but I couldn’t keep ignoring the research. In this jigsaw, activity was related to changes to ecosystems. Each group had five members, and then I split the five groups up into expert groups. My expert groups were: wildfire, logging, drought, ...
I love The Science Penguin’s Ecosystem Stations. I keep each station activity in a file folder. If the station requires cards, I keep the cards in sandwich bags in the folder. I love this resource, and I typically give students about three days to finish the booklet recording sheet.
Biomes are not technically in my science standards, but they lend themselves perfect to a ecosystem project or unit. An added benefit is that science is the one subject I don’t feel rushed to teach, so I have time for projects like this. I assign each student a biome: taiga, tundra, deciduous forest, tropical rainforest, desert, and grassland. Befo...
Naturally any lesson that includes LIVE FISH is sure to be a hit with students! To finish the unit, students got to build their own ecosystems. I didn’t try to have every student build an ecosystem. Although, that would be awesome. Since it was my first year teaching this lesson, I wanted to start small. I thought visual directions might be easier ...
Jan 16, 2023 · Teaching certain subsections of science is sometimes more engaging than others, and with our help- you should be able to effectively engage learners in a fun ecosystem lesson. Read on for 15 activities to captivate learners while learning about ecosystems and biomes.
- Ashley Charles
Sep 30, 2022 · The NGSS Standards for ecosystems span several elementary grade levels. Second-grade students learn that plants need sunlight and water to grow and learn about how plants depend on animals for pollination or to move seeds around.
- Phenomena-based Science Unit. How can a single species in an ecosystem affect the whole food web? Designed for 5th grade NGSS, this phenomena-based science unit focuses on keystone species.
- Step On It! Walking Food Web. Students actually MOVE through a food web and see how energy flows. Students each represent a unit of energy. Where did they come from before arriving at the phytoplankton?
- Notebook Templates. I love using notebooks for student practice, teaching mini-lessons, and keeping a record of our learning. Check out the templates on TpT: All in One Science Interactive Notebook.
- Owl Pellet Dissection. Kids loooooove dissecting owl pellets! I’ve done this activity with 4th grade, 5th grade, and even my preschooler! They won’t just “ooh” and “ahh” though.
Apr 16, 2023 · This blog post provides a comprehensive guide for teaching ecosystems to students in grade 6-9. It includes creative and engaging ways to teach the concepts of ecosystems, abiotic/biotic factors, populations, communities, ecosystem recycling, sustainability, and human impacts.
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These ecosystem lesson plans help students recognize that all living organisms on Earth rely on one another through ecosystems. In ecosystems, microorganisms act as vital decomposers, sustaining life by breaking down organic matter. Non-living elements impact dynamics through habitat provision.
