Unit 07 · Ecosystems & Interdependence
No living thing survives alone. This unit is about ecosystems — the web of connections between living things and their surroundings. You’ll sort producers, consumers, and decomposers, trace how energy flows through food chains and food webs, and see how living and non-living parts depend on one another. Mastery means you can map who eats whom and predict what happens when one part of the system changes.
| Criterion | Not yet | Approaching | Mastered |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | Doesn’t connect food to energy moving through the system. | Says energy moves but can’t show its direction. | Traces energy from the sun through producers to consumers and explains why it flows one way. |
| Interdependence & change | Treats each organism as if it lives on its own. | Knows living things connect but can’t predict a ripple effect. | Predicts how a change to one population ripples through the whole ecosystem. |
| Lab technique (food web / ecosystem-in-a-jar) | Builds a model that leaves out key organisms or links. | Builds the model but can’t explain how the parts depend on each other. | Builds a food web or ecosystem-in-a-jar, observes it over time, and explains the connections. |
| Integration (cross-domain) | Treats the science as isolated facts; makes no cross-domain connection. | Names a link to history, reading, or writing but cannot defend why it matters. | Connects the unit to its anchor across History · Reading · Writing (plus chosen electives) and defends why the connection matters. |
“In my food web the grass is the producer, the rabbit eats it, and the hawk eats the rabbit — energy flows from the sun on up. When I imagined removing the hawks, the rabbits boomed and ate too much grass, so the whole system shifted.”
“A food chain is who’s biggest, so the hawk is on top. Energy is just there. I don’t think removing one animal would change much.”
You demonstrate this unit by building food webs and ecosystems-in-a-jar — modeling how living things connect and watching what happens over time — explaining the links aloud, not on a multiple-choice test. A criterion counts as mastered only when you can both build the model and explain the ecology behind it. Mastery is demonstrated, not awarded.
A 5-page clipboard packet — unit overview, key terms, the mastery rubric, anchor examples, and a score sheet you can print and grade against.