Engage

Discussion:

• Based on this photo and this quote, who do you think Ed Ricketts was?
• What do you think he means by “the science of living relationships”?
• What do you think the three or four approaches to ecology might be?

Discuss these questions in small groups or pairs and then write notes in response to each question.

Explore

Check out this slide deck of Life History Illustrations.

Explain 

As a class, review the slide deck: Researching the Life History of a Species 

Apply

Level 3: “If you know the natural history, but especially the complete life history of the beasts chiefly involved, you can allocate it accurately and understand just how and even why it occurs in a certain place at a given period in its life history—to what association or associations it belongs at various times of its life, and why.”

Assignment: Research your Aggregation of Species

Choose one species that you observed in your “aggregation of species” from part 2. Conduct research on the life history of your species using the key questions from the Researching the Life History of a Species slide deck:

• What are the life stages of this species?
• What does its habitat look like? Does its habitat change throughout its life?
• Does it stay in one place or does it move/migrate throughout its life?

• If it moves/migrages, where does it go and how does it get there?

• How does it reproduce?
• How does it gain energy?

• Is it an autotroph (like a plant) or a heterotroph (like an animal)?
• If it is a heterotroph does it eat different things throughout its life?

Then, select one or two other organisms from the aggregation of species that you observed in Part 2, and conduct additional research to learn about their life history. Using this research, add notes and illustrations to your field journal recordings of an Aggregation of Species from Part 2.

Share

Share pictures of your journal pages with notes about your research on your class’s Padlet. Find your teacher’s name and your class and add your pages below. When you share your journal pages, also comment on one other students’ journal page from your class.

https://padlet.com/wffeducation/shrmkgpjtjtx5kst

Reflect

Return to your discussion questions from Engage.

• Who do you think Ed Ricketts was?
• What do you think he means by “the science of living relationships”?
• What do you think the three or four approaches to ecology might be?

Based on what you’ve learned so far, add to the notes that you took at the beginning of the lesson. .

Extend

Start a class blog!

Write a blog post about the life history of the organisms in your species aggregation. Your post can be funny, serious, entertaining, poetic - whatever inspires you! You can include photos or your illustrations in the post.

Use blogger to can create a class blog that everyone can add their posts to:

https://www.blogger.com/dashboard/reading