*Energy flow is the flow of energy through a food chain. It includes various species and feeding relationships. For example, secondary consumers consume primary consumers and even primary producers within an ecosystem. Nurtient cycles differ because they are the recycling or organic and inorganic material back into the production of living matter. It is the movement or exchange of material within ecosystems, such as decomposition.
*While there are some very apparent differences among the ecosystems across the globe such as animal inhabitants, many others surface as well. For example, the climate of the rainforest being moist and warm is very different than the arctic where it is dry and cold. Also, the vegetation due to these conditions varies such as flourish tall trees in the rainforest and stocky rooty trees in mangroves. The main similarity across the different ecosystems is how the food chain/web or energy flow works. Specifically how organisms interact with eachother. A lot of interactions of things working together to complete the life cycle are present. There are always primary producers and consumers to utilize their "services." With that, there are specifically organisms that serve to be the keystone specie due to its large population and importance across the ecosystem, as well as apex predators who dominate the food chain and serve to be "top dogs." Another huge similarity is that the ecosystems are in great danger and mostly due to human impact. Their resources are being depleated, over consumed or wiped out to place new infrastructure on.
*The Big Idea of ecolgy is that organisms interact with eachother and their environment. All of the presentations circled around the Big Idea. Each presentation touched on the environment regarding climate, location on Earth and the vegetation present. They also included how the living things benefited off of one another and worked with eachother one way or another to maintain a balance. Most of the presentations just spoke of these topics individually but made a point to address the big idea either within each topic or at the end compile them all together. They serve as evaluation for understanding the Big Idea because they are evidence based claims that refer to the one Big Idea that occurs in all ecosystems across the land, no matter what their differences may be.
*I enojyed the fact that each group had to become an expert on a specific ecosystem and then present their expertise to the class. I have used this method in classes before, as a student and a teacher, and have seen the benefits of students taking ownership as well as being motivated from the other students to learn what they know. As a teacher, I would have liked to require an activity or more of an application of the facts for the class to really get their hands dirty with the information. Actually, as a student I would have liked that as well. Something such as the first group of passing out mangos to the class so that they can conceptualize what is actually around those parts. Another example could be creating a physical and moveable diagram to pass around that touches all of the main points under the Big Idea.
*The weaknesses with group projects is that if the group is 4 people, there usually is one distinct leader and one distinct slacker. I feel as a student that it would have been more work on each person but it would have also been more authentic if we were required to exactly break down the assignment into equal parts. I would have also liked to see examples or bounced around ideas with the other groups prior to getting started about good presentations and actually acting them out. As from a teacher's perspective, I would have liked to incorporate more time for questions and answers done by the students to deepen comprehension and then at the end of the presentations take all of the main points from each and compile it into a graphic organizer for all of the students to visually see.
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