Students use photos and information about Australia's Shark Bay to draw and label a simple food web. Then they identify which animal in the ecosystem is a keystone species.
In this STEM unit, students participate in an activity to grow plants in an environment very similar to the moon, which is designed in a unique partnership between NASA scientists and engineers and education professionals. The lesson incorporates leading-edge insight and practical experiences for students on how NASA works with plants. Students will describe the need for life science research on the International Space Station and the moon. They will also identify various plant species that are suitable for lunar plant growth and their requirements. In the culminating activities, students design and construct a working prototype of a plant growth chamber.
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Students investigate marine food webs and trophic levels, research one marine organism, this activity sand fit their organisms together in a class-created food web showing a balanced marine ecosystem.
In this short video and accompanying activity and readings, students learn about Longleaf Pine Ecosystems by exploring Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve in North Carolina.
In this activity students will research ecosystems at risk and write a summary of relationships that are suffering or are causing problems in some of Earth's best known ecosystems.
Provides a video and a link to an article that discusses plant and animal adaptations of the Amazon.
This free, online article, developed for elementary teachers, describes a Kindergarten polar science, standards aligned, unit centered on The Polar Express developing literacy, math, and science skills.
This lesson begins by following up to the previous lesson in which students were instructed to politely refuse one single-use item. Students will observe how one community in South America makes something wonderful from trash. Students will learn the importance of reducing their trash by actively participating in a trash-sorting activity, and demonstrate the ability to reuse trash by making a "trash to treasure" product. This lesson was developed by Lee Ann Smith as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.
VLab: Stream EcologyInvestigate how pollutants affect a stream's temperature, dissolved oxygen, and inhabitants.
This brief video lesson describes the miraculous journey of infant sea turtles as these tiny animals run the gauntlet of predators and harsh conditions. Then, in numbers, see how human behavior has made their tough lives even more challenging. Discussion/assessment questions and suggested supplemental resources are also included.
How has the wildebeest population changed? How has this affected the Serengeti ecosystem?
How carbon and energy move through an ecosystem will be discussed in this lesson.
In order to understand the cycles of carbon in an ecosystem, we will play a game that represents how carbon cycles through an ecosystem. This game is a simulation of what happens in an ecosystem.
In order to understand the way carbon cycles through an ecosystem, it would be a good idea if we followed a simulation that tracks interactions in a different ecosystem. In this online Sunny Meadows simulation (http://carbontime.bscs.org/interactives/index.html), you will observe changes in biomass of producers (grasses), herbivores (rabbits), and carnivores (foxes) over a 100 year period.
Develop a model of the Serengeti ecosystem to predict what we think the buffalo and the wildebeest populations will do based on what we know about the Serengeti. Will they continue to grow, stable out, or decline. Use the data from the simulation as well as other information from previous lessons.
This is additional curriculum for the Untamed Science video series created in a partnership between the North Carolina Zoo and videographer Rob Nelson. You are meant to watch the original videos about Gopher Frogs and Hellbenders, and then open the PDF resource below to learn how you can help conserve these precious amphibians!
Engineers design and implement many creative techniques for managing stormwater at its sources in order to improve and restore the hydrology and water quality of developed sites to pre-development conditions. Through the two lessons in this unit, students are introduced to green infrastructure (GI) and low-impact development (LID) technologies, including green roofs and vegetative walls, bioretention or rain gardens, bioswales, planter boxes, permeable pavement, urban tree canopies, rainwater harvesting, downspout disconnection, green streets and alleys, and green parking. Student teams take on the role of stormwater engineers through five associated activities. They first model the water cycle, and then measure transpiration rates and compare native plant species. They investigate the differences in infiltration rates and storage capacities between several types of planting media before designing their own media mixes to meet design criteria. Then they design and test their own pervious pavement mix combinations. In the culminating activity, teams bring together all the concepts as well as many of the materials from the previous activities in order to create and install personal rain gardens. The unit prepares the students and teachers to take on the design and installation of bigger rain garden projects to manage stormwater at their school campuses, homes and communities.
Students learn what they would need to pack for a trip to outer space, how to survive in outer space, and why recycling is important.
This multimedia resource, part of the NC Science Now series, describes how Dr. Roland Keys, Director of the Biodiversity and Earth Observation Lab at the NC Museum of Natural Science, is using remote controlled, hidden cameras, telemetry and GPS to record animal behavior and movement and to study whether human activity is affecting animal populations in a specific area. Components of this resource include a video, a related blog article, and an interview with Dr. Keys. Links to these components are provided on the page under the heading "UNC-TV Media."
Visitors to this site can study a discussion of the need for computer modeling to examine the terrestrial biosphere. Emphasis is placed on integration of multiple measurements across varying scales of time and space into a single tool for visualizing a system, and its use in predicting future changes. Links to a glossary are embedded in the text.