Unit Title: Ecosystem Function and Dynamics

Unit Goal: To enable students to understand and explain basic ecological concepts, think critically, apply skills in data collection and analysis, recognise sustainability issues and act responsibly in their environment.

Week 1: • Introduce the unit, explain the unit outcomes, set ground rules and explain rubric for assessment. •Review basic ecological concepts, e.g. population growth and environmental niches • Introduce controls and variables and the different ways they are used and applied

Week 2: • Discuss the different types of ecological food webs and their relationships • Investigate the ecology of a local aquatic system • Research abiotic and biotic factors which might influence the health of an aquatic habitat

Week 3: • Analyze various ecological data sets and utilize numerical data to explain the ecology of an aquatic habitats • Discuss how human activity affects the health of an aquatic ecosystem • Develop a research project and hypothesis to provide the basis for next week’s experiments

Week 4: • Design individual experiments to test their hypothesis using the research project • Carry out investigations and collate data • Review the sources and reliability of data they have collected

Week 5: • Analyze, discuss and draw conclusions from their data • Identify and explain ethical considerations associated with their experiments • Utilize graphs to demonstrate patterns and trends in the data collected

Week 6: • Introduce global land ecosystem of forests, grasslands and deserts • Investigate the ecology of a local land ecosystem • Identify abiotic and biotic factors which influence the health of a land habitat

Week 7: • Analyze various ecological data sets and utilize numerical data to explain the ecology of a land habitat • Discuss the human impact on global land ecosystems • Develop a research project and hypothesis to provide the basis for the experiments in the following week

Week 8: • Design individual experiments to test their hypotheses • Carry out investigations and collate data • Review the sources and reliability of the collected data

Week 9: • Analyze, discuss and draw conclusions from their data • Identify and explain ethical considerations associated with their experiments • Utilize graphs to demonstrate patterns and trends in the collected data

Week 10: • Introduce the concept of sustainability • Investigate how human activity affects the ecology of an aquatic, land and global ecosystems • Discuss and create action plans for sustainable behaviour

Week 11: • Students to present their experiments and conclusions in the form of a scientific paper • Discuss and review the effectiveness of their action plans • Utilize research data to compare global ecology in the past and present

Week 12: • Reflection of the unit, review key concepts • Debriefing of unit, answering of questions • Assessment of the unit by evaluating students’ action plans and scientific papers