LS.5: Biotic and abiotic factors affect an ecosystem: energy flow is…

Our Living Planet Grade 4

Air, water, land and living things, and how each one depends on the others. Students build a sealed jar ecosystem to keep for a month and catch the water cycle in a bag on the window.

• Can a jar keep itself alive? 50–60 min to build, then 5 min check-ins twice a week for 4 weeks, and a 30 min Reveal and Act

  Each team builds a small world of soil, water, air and plants inside a clear jar, seals it, and keeps an observation log for four weeks beside an open jar built the same way. Students explain how water and air are used again and again inside the sealed jar, and why it still needs light from outside.

• Where does rain come from? 45–60 min, plus a 5 min look later the same day or the next morning

  Students tape a zip-top bag of blue water to a sunny window and another to a shady wall, and catch a cold cup 'sweating' in the room. They follow the water from the bottom of the bag to the clear drops at the top, and explain how the Sun, air and clouds bring rain back down.

Food Webs: Who Eats Whom? Grade 5

Where a plant's food comes from, what happens when the wolves disappear, who cleans up, and how much life hides under a log. Four lessons on how energy and matter move through living things.

• Where does a plant get its food? 50–60 min, plus 10 min to weigh seedlings two weeks later

  Students sink spinach leaf disks in baking soda water and watch them float back up in the light as they make oxygen, then start bean seedlings with no soil at all and weigh them two weeks later. They explain that plants build their food from air and water using light, not from the soil.

• What would happen if the wolves disappeared? 45–60 min

  Students become species in a northern forest or a prairie and connect themselves with yarn into a living food web. When one species is removed, everyone who feels the yarn tug finds out how far the change spreads, and students explain why no species lives on its own.

• Who cleans up? 45 min to set up, 5 min check-ins twice a week, then 30 min after 2 weeks (bread) and 20 min after 4 to 6 weeks (leaves)

  Students seal bread and fruit in taped zip bags to watch mould grow without ever opening them, and bury mesh bags of dry leaves in soil to weigh what's left weeks later. They explain how decomposers break down dead things and return matter to the soil for plants to use again.

• Can we count the life under a log? 50–60 min

  Teams mark out a 1 m square in two different parts of the schoolyard, tally every kind of living thing they find, and compare the two sites. They explain which place supports more life and why, using the food webs and decomposers from earlier lessons.

Printable practice for LS.5

These pages practise a closely related idea; the match to LS.5 is partial.

• Our Living Planet workbook included with the unit

  1 word wall, 1 English-support page, 1 practice page, 1 reading, 1 unit review, 1 unit test, with answer keys.

• Food Webs: Who Eats Whom? workbook included with the unit

  3 practice pages, 3 readings, 2 English-support pages, 1 word wall, 1 unit review, 1 unit test, with answer keys.

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