Unit 21: Organisms and Their Environment

Unit 21: Organisms and Their Environment

This unit focuses on the great diversity and interconnectedness of life on Earth that results in a flow of energy. Students learn how living systems obey the same laws as physical systems.

Student Goals

• Demonstrate an understanding of the interconnectedness of life on Earth.
• Learn about the interdependence of organisms and why biodiversity is important.
• Understand how energy flows through living systems of producers, consumers, and decomposers.
• Learn that living systems obey the same laws as physical systems, such that matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed, and any change in energy results in a loss of energy as heat.
• Understand that knowledge of energy is fundamental to all sciences.
• Understand the meaning of ecosystem, food chain, food web, and energy pyramid.

Unit Focus

• Know that changes in a component of an ecosystem will have unpredictable effects on the entire system but that the components of the system tend to react in a way that will restore the ecosystem to its original condition.
• Understand how knowledge of energy is fundamental to all the scientific disciplines (e.g., the energy required for biological processes in living organisms and the energy required for the building, erosion, and rebuilding of the Earth).
• Understand that biological systems obey the same laws of conservation as physical systems.