Years 3 - 4
Ecosystem, how plants and animals live together
Overview
Module 1 - Teacher and students explore their local environment, documenting trees and invertebrates, understanding the bush as an ecosystem; one in which, animal organisms, large or small, cycle and re-cycle the food energy created by plants. Using a classroom model of their data as an installation, an ecogram, students document the food chain they have researched and its stepwise degradation when pollination fails, or a feral predator is introduced.
Module 2 – Students explore the world of insects, how they live, how they help each other, and how they reproduce, providing possible reasons for their spectacular success.
Outcomes
Students
• research and gather data on plants and invertebrates in both a natural and a disturbed environment
• analyse their data, drawing conclusions that are based on evidence
• from their data, interpret ‘biodiversity’ and ‘healthy’ country
• understand the natural environment functions as an ecosystem, in which all living elements are connected by food energy, either as producer or as consumer
• document how a balanced ecosystem is disturbed by an introduced predator, or failure of pollination.
• explore the life forms of insects as evidence of their reproductive success
• introduce symbiosis and Natural Selection
Curriculum Links
• Living things can be grouped on the basis of observable features and can be distinguished from non-living things (ACSSU044)
• With guidance, plan and conduct scientific investigations to find answers to questions, considering the safe use of appropriate materials and equipment (ACSIS054)
• Use a range of methods including tables and simple column graphs to represent data and to identify patterns and trends (ACSIS057)
• Compare results with predictions, suggesting possible reasons for findings (ACSIS215)
• Living things have life cycles (ACSSU072)
• Living things depend on each other and the environment to survive (ACSSU073)
• With guidance, plan and conduct scientific investigations to find answers to questions, considering the safe use of appropriate materials and equipment (ACSIS065)
• Compare results with predictions, suggesting possible reasons for findings (ACSIS216)
From the Experts
The late Barbara York Main OAM says ...
“ecosystem, like biodiversity, is an ‘in’ word. But what does it mean? As an abbreviation of ‘ecological system’, it denotes some sort of interaction of life forms and dependence within a physical, non-biological framework on which the living forms in turn have some effect. As a system, an inherent cohesion is intimated; external limits are inferred. All this in turn suggests that an ecosystem has boundaries. A dictionary supports this concept in the definition ‘The plants and animals of a particular habitat, together with the environment influenced by their presence’ (1). Ecosystems can be large or small, open or near closed, ranging from the complexity of a tropical rainforest to a pool of water on a granite rock...”
Kingsley Dixon AO says ...
”Western Australia has about 12,000 plant species, of which, 8,500 grow in the southwest region. It is one of the world’s richest areas for plant and animal wildlife. This rich diversity has developed many evolutionary tricks of the trade. Seeds have developed intriguing strategies; from waiting for a chemical that comes from bushfire’s smoke to tell the plants that the seed can wake-up because there’s going to be space to grow; to the way that seeds can read and develop their own particular way of telling the time.
In so many ways the southwest plants, with their deep time evolution of more than 120 million years, has meant they have developed some of the world’s most extraordinary strategies to grow thrive and persist in one of the world’s toughest environments.
The region has another statistic; it is one of the world’s 25 ‘biodiversity hotspots’, defined as having an alarming number of plant and particularly animal recent extinctions.
We live in a region that is not only rich in species, but also very diverse with a patch of forest in one region being completely different from forest elsewhere. Plants have evolved to grow in very particular places, animals have their territory because that’s where they find their food. This means we have to care for these places, our forests, woodlands, swamps, and river systems to ensure that this delicate balance that nature has woven over millions of years is retained and enhanced”....
Engaging with Aboriginal people
1. Refer to Principles for Engagement with Aboriginal Communities (see Appendix)
2. The Aboriginal Cultural Standards Framework, Department of Education, Western Australia, 2015 https://www.education.wa.edu.au/dl/jjpzned
3. Cultural and ecological knowledge (kaartdijin) that Aboriginal people may share is their Intellectual Property. If the teacher wishes to use the knowledge other than in the sphere of student learning, agreement must be reached between the school and the Aboriginal person involved. This is preferably a signed statement from each of them.
From the Noongar
Oral McGuire (Ballardong Leader and Land Manager) says…
“Ecosystems are kinship systems for Nature...”
Doolan (Leisha May Garlett) Eatts, Ballardong elder says…
“My name is Doolan (Leisha May Garlett) Eatts and I was born at Badjalling in 1934. The budjar makes me happy and it makes me sad. When I think back, I think of my koort budjar - my heartland - and I love my heartland. I say my koort budjar and my mia budjar. My heartland and my homeland... things have gone wrong now because the land was cleared up. It was cleared by our people, they needed to work the land for income because the land was being taken by the European farmers… what has gone wrong is they cleared all the land, what they haven’t cleared they have sprayed all over the land, killing the bugs for the fruit tress but they killed the land for all our fruit and vegetables that we used to get off the land... It has all gone it will never come again…”
Janet (Mourarch) Collard, Ballardong elder says…
“Caring for country means not to knock the trees down, always keep the budjar nice. Noongar always looked after mother earth because mother earth is good to us, so we have to look after it…”
IN: Recording Traditional Knowledge, Our Country … Our Stories … Our People. https://www.wheatbeltnrm.org.au/sites/default/files/ knowledge_hub/documents/RTKlitweb_0.pdf
