Preview · the opening missionRead this to the class:
The town of Fieldhaven sits on a low coast. Every few years a storm pushes the sea into the streets. Last winter it reached the school. The town council has money for one plan: build a concrete sea wall, bring back the salt marsh that was drained for farmland 80 years ago, or do a little of both. Your team's job: weigh the evidence and recommend the plan that protects people and the ecosystem.
Teams of three, with jobs: Reader (reads cards aloud), Scorer (fills the matrix), Speaker (presents the recommendation). Fieldhaven is made up; the evidence about walls and marshes is real.
Look inside the PDF
Sample pages, stamped “preview”. The download is the clean, full lesson.
In the full lesson PDF
8 printable pages
- Predict (5 min)
- Hunt (25 min)
- Reveal (10–15 min)
- Act (10 min)
- Background for the teacher
- Assessment
- Student sheet
- Worksheet: Case file and option cards
- Worksheet: Label it
- Worksheet: Try it at home
On the student sheet
- My prediction
- Yellowstone: which claim does the evidence support?
- Decision matrix
- Our recommendation and trade-off
- Case file and option cards
- Label it
- Try it at home
US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white. The student sheet is on its own page, ready to photocopy.
Free with an account (any 3 lessons), or US$19 for all 4 lessons in this unit.
What students show by the end
- Uses evidence on populations
- Evaluates designs against criteria
- Links biodiversity to services
From the lesson’s rubric, which scores each one as not yet, getting there or got it.
Questions teachers ask
How long does “How can we protect an ecosystem's services?” take?
55–60 min. Group size: teams of 3.
How much prep does it need?
10 minutes: print the student sheet for everyone and one Yellowstone case file and one set of option cards per team, cut apart.
What materials do I need?
None. No materials needed: just the printed sheets.
Which curriculum standards does it cover?
NGSS (US): MS-LS2-4 (partly) and MS-LS2-5 (partly). It also matches England National Curriculum, Key Stage 3 and Cambridge Lower Secondary Science, Stages 7 to 9 (not endorsed by Cambridge).
What’s in the lesson PDF?
A teacher guide that walks you through predict, hunt, reveal, act, background for the teacher and assessment, then a student sheet (“My prediction”, “Yellowstone: which claim does the evidence support?”, “Decision matrix”, “Our recommendation and trade-off”, “Case file and option cards”, “Label it” and “Try it at home”) on its own page, ready to photocopy. It’s US Letter and prints cleanly in black and white.
Can I try it for free?
Yes. A free account includes any 3 full lessons of your choice, and this can be one of them. After that, this unit is US$19 for all 4 lessons, yours to keep, or every lesson is US$199 a year.