Use these targets, vocabulary, rubrics, examples, and score sheet with the instructor's approved lesson and procedure. This is an assessment companion, not a complete lesson or safety authorization.
Student lessons, data, and worked answers: Unit 07 learning pathway.
The student demonstrates the following:
Five science criteria plus separately reported integration (Page 3).
Build and revise a paper food web; no organism collection.
The student traces energy from the sun upward (Page 4).
Roles, the food web, and the what-if predictions kept distinct.
You are making a decision, not adding up points. For each criterion, decide whether the work is Developing, Proficient, or Mastery — the column language tells you which. A criterion counts as mastered only when the student can both build the food web and defend how energy flows through it. Each student has three tokens per term; each token retries one rubric criterion. Approved accommodations, equipment failures, and approved absences are handled separately and do not consume these tokens.
Accept listed synonyms; use the distinction column to resolve near-matches.
| Canonical answer | Accepted synonyms | Common confusion / discriminator |
|---|---|---|
| Roles & feeding | ||
| Producer | plant, food-maker | Makes its own food from sunlight — the base of every food web |
| Consumer | animal that eats others | Gets energy by eating producers or other consumers |
| Decomposer | recycler | Breaks down dead things and returns nutrients to the soil |
| Food web | feeding network | Many food chains linked — all the who-eats-whom paths at once |
| Energy & change | ||
| Food chain | single feeding path | One straight line of who eats whom, sun to top — not who is biggest |
| Energy flow | energy transfer | Energy moves from the sun up each level and drops along the way |
| Interdependence | living things rely on each other | Change one part and the others feel it |
| Population | group of one species | How many of one kind live in an area; can boom or crash |
| Criterion | Developing | Proficient | Mastery |
|---|---|---|---|
| Producers, consumers & decomposers | Can’t sort living things by how they get their food. | Names the roles but places some organisms wrong. | Sorts organisms into producers, consumers, and decomposers and explains each role. |
| Food chains & food webs | Thinks a food chain is about which animal is biggest. | Builds a straight food chain but not a connected web. | Builds a food web that shows how many food chains link together in an ecosystem. |
| Energy flow | Confuses energy flow with recycling matter. | Shows direction but omits units, transfer losses or heat. | Traces energy through a food web, calculates a supplied transfer percentage, and distinguishes heat loss from cycling matter. |
| Interdependence & change | Treats one before/after story as proof of a single cause. | Predicts a change but omits dates, alternative causes or count limits. | Uses dated evidence and interacting mechanisms to make a bounded ecosystem prediction with observation limits. |
| Lab technique (food-web modeling) | Builds a model that leaves out key organisms or links. | Builds the model but needs help revising a claim when conditions change. | Builds and revises a food-web model, distinguishing observed records, synthetic data and conditional predictions. |
| Integration (cross-domain) | Makes no supported connection between the source and the science. | Uses the source but needs help connecting evidence, writing, or limitations to the science. | Independently connects History, Reading, and Writing using a cited source, appropriate evidence, a limitation, and a scientific explanation. |
The split between Proficient and Mastery is the ripple effect: mastery predicts what happens elsewhere when one part shifts. Ask “if the hawks left, what happens to the rabbits — and then the grass?”
Read these before you grade. They show what Mastery and Developing actually sound like, plus the edge cases where you should coach rather than decide on the spot.
Student: ______________________________________ Date: _______________ Guide: _________________________
Integration is reported separately and cannot lower the science grade or block a science demonstration pass. Science and practical criteria determine that pass.
| # | Criterion | Decision | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Producers, consumers & decomposers | Dev / Prof / Mast | |
| 2 | Food chains & food webs | Dev / Prof / Mast | |
| 3 | Energy flow | Dev / Prof / Mast | |
| 4 | Interdependence & change | Dev / Prof / Mast | |
| 5 | Lab technique (food-web modeling) | Dev / Prof / Mast | |
| 6 | Integration (cross-domain) | Dev / Prof / Mast |
☐ No ☐ Yes — for criterion: __________
Tokens left this term after this session (choose one): ☐ 3 ☐ 2 ☐ 1 ☐ None left
Dev = Developing · Prof = Proficient · Mast = Mastery · Unsure between two levels? Circle the lower one and note what a re-do would need.