Living Earth · Week 31 · Ecosystem Stability and Human Impact
When Ecosystems Change
Arguing whether the Salton Sea ecosystem can recover and noticing how hope and worry both shape our thinking.
- Students will
- Students argue from evidence whether the Salton Sea ecosystem can return to stability after large changes in its conditions.
- SEL skill
- Name both hope and worry and notice how each shapes your thinking about evidence
- What it looks like
- Students notice how hope and worry both shape how they think about evidence.
- Content focus
- Can the Salton Sea recover?
- Format
- Think write pair share
Self-awareness
Self-awareness is knowing your own feelings, thoughts, and strengths and how they affect your actions. More self-awareness activities
What you get
A teacher guide with what to say, step by step, plus student pages and a supports page for students with diverse learning needs, including those with IEPs. Print or Project it, or assign it in Google Forms and Google Docs for Google Classroom. Your first 10 activities are free.
Standards
- HS-LS2-6: High School Life Science performance expectation
- Science and engineering practice: SEP7 Engaging in argument from evidence
- Crosscutting concept: CCC7 Stability and change
- CA Environmental Principles and Concepts: Principle III: Natural systems change in ways people benefit from and can influence
- Literacy in science: WHST.9-10.1 Write arguments focused on discipline specific content.
- Traditional course: Biology
Fits these textbook chapters
- California HMH Science Dimensions: The Living Earth, Unit 1: Living Systems
- California HMH Science Dimensions: The Living Earth, Unit 8: Ecosystem Stability and the Response to Climate Change
Textbook names are used only to help you find activities that fit what you teach. RoseThread Connect is not affiliated with these publishers.
More self-awareness activities for Living Earth
- Who Gets to Be a Scientist? Self-awarenessStudents map the questions they already ask about the desert around them and name the scientist identity they bring into Living Earth.
- Sunlight Into Sugar Self-awarenessModeling photosynthesis as an energy transformation and naming what refuels students' own energy.
- Clues in Shared Ancestry Self-awarenessComparing anatomical and DNA evidence for common ancestry and reflecting on the family and community roots students share.
- Semester Reflection: My Growth as a Scientist Self-awarenessStudents explain how the factors of evolution changed a real population, contrast that with how they grew as learners this semester, and set goals for the spring.
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RoseThread Connect activities are drafted with the help of AI and shaped by educators. Students never have to share anything personal. Our five SEL skills are informed by CASEL's SEL Framework; RoseThread Learning is not affiliated with or endorsed by CASEL.