This packet is everything a parent or guide needs to assess Unit 08 at home — learning targets, the answers that count as correct, the mastery rubric, calibration examples, and a clipboard score sheet. No multiple-choice test: the student shows mastery by watching real behavior, building an ethogram, and placing an animal in its ecology.
By the end of the Animal Behavior & Ecology unit, a student should be able to:
Six criteria, each judged Not yet / Approaching / Mastered (Page 3).
Watch and time real behavior; build an ethogram.
The student describes behavior without guessing why (Page 4).
Observations, ethogram, and ecology kept distinct.
You are making a decision, not adding up points. For each criterion, decide whether the work is Not yet, Approaching, or Mastered — the column language tells you which. A criterion counts as mastered only when the student can both record what they see and justify the animal biology behind it. A student carries three tokens per term; one token buys a re-do of one criterion on another day, so a single bad afternoon never sinks the unit.
Accept any answer in the synonyms column — they are pre-approved as equivalent. The third column flags the confusions that look close but are not yet, so you can coach precisely.
| Canonical answer | Accepted synonyms | Common confusion / discriminator |
|---|---|---|
| Behavior | ||
| Innate behavior | instinct | Wired in from birth; needs no learning (a spider's web) |
| Learned behavior | acquired behavior | Shaped by experience (a songbird's local song) |
| Fixed action pattern | FAP | A set behavior run to completion once triggered |
| Sign stimulus | releaser | The signal that triggers a fixed action pattern |
| Ecology | ||
| Ethogram | behavior catalog | A record of observable behaviors — what, not why |
| Niche | ecological role | The role and place a species fills in its community |
| Food web | feeding network | Who eats whom; wider than a single food chain |
| Predator-prey pressure | population control | Shapes how populations rise and fall |
| Criterion | Not yet | Approaching | Mastered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Innate vs. learned behavior | Cannot tell instinct from something the animal learned. | Names the two but mislabels examples. | Distinguishes innate from learned behavior and classifies examples correctly. |
| Fixed action patterns & signaling | Cannot describe a set behavior or the signal that triggers it. | Names a behavior but not the stimulus that releases it. | Identifies a fixed action pattern and the sign stimulus that triggers it, and reads the signals animals use. |
| Observing & recording behavior | Records interpretations, not observations. | Describes behavior but slips into guessing motives. | Builds an ethogram of observable behaviors, recording what the animal does without assuming why. |
| Ecology (niches, food webs, populations) | Cannot place an animal in a food web or name its niche. | Names a food chain but misses the wider web or the niche. | Maps an animal into its food web, names its niche, and explains how predator-prey pressure shapes populations. |
| Lab technique (field observation) | Skips observation or invents behavior not seen. | Observes but records loosely or reads in motives. | Uses field-observation tools to watch and time behavior, records it, and draws conclusions the observations support. |
| 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. |
The split between Approaching and Mastered is what before why: the student records the behavior first and reads motive only when the data supports it. Ask “what did the animal actually do, and for how long?”
Read these before you grade. They show what Mastered and Not yet actually sound like, plus the edge cases where you should coach rather than decide on the spot.
Student: ______________________________________ Date: _______________ Guide: _________________________
| # | Criterion | Decision | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Innate vs. learned behavior | NY / Appr / Mast | |
| 2 | Fixed action patterns & signaling | NY / Appr / Mast | |
| 3 | Observing & recording behavior | NY / Appr / Mast | |
| 4 | Ecology (niches, food webs, populations) | NY / Appr / Mast | |
| 5 | Lab technique (field observation) | NY / Appr / Mast | |
| 6 | Integration (cross-domain) | NY / Appr / Mast |
☐ No ☐ Yes — for criterion: __________ Tokens remaining: ☐ 3 ☐ 2 ☐ 1 ☐ 0
NY = Not yet · Appr = Approaching · Mast = Mastered · Unsure between two levels? Circle the lower one and note what a re-do would need.