Standard 2: Students will understand that energy from sunlight is changed to chemical
energy in plants, transfers between living organisms, and that changing the environment
may alter the amount of energy provided to living organisms.
Objective 1: Compare ways that plants and animals obtain and use energy.
a. Recognize the importance of photosynthesis in using light energy as part of the chemical process
that builds plant materials.
b. Explain how respiration in animals is a process that converts food energy into mechanical and
heat energy.
c. Trace the path of energy from the sun to mechanical energy in an organism (e.g., sunlight - light
energy to plants by photosynthesis to sugars - stored chemical energy to respiration in muscle cell
- usable chemical energy to muscle contraction- mechanical energy).
Objective 2: Generalize the dependent relationships between organisms.
a. Categorize the relationships between organisms (i.e., producer/consumer, predator/prey,
mutualism, parasitism) and provide examples of each.
b. Use models to trace the flow of energy in food chains and food webs.
c. Formulate and test a hypothesis on the effects of air, temperature, water, or light on plants (e.g.,
seed germination, growth rates, seasonal adaptations).
d. Research multiple ways that different scientists have investigated the same ecosystem.
Objective 3: Analyze human influence on the capacity of an environment to sustain living things.
a. Describe specific examples of how humans have changed the capacity of an environment to
support specific life forms (e.g., people create wetlands and nesting boxes that increase the
number and range of wood ducks, acid rain damages amphibian eggs and reduces population of
frogs, clear cutting forests affects squirrel populations, suburban sprawl reduces mule deer winter
range thus decreasing numbers of deer).
b. Distinguish between inference and evidence in a newspaper or magazine article relating to the
effect of humans on the environment.
c. Infer the potential effects of humans on a specific food web.
d. Evaluate and present arguments for and against allowing a specific species of plant or animal to
become extinct, and relate the argument to the of flow energy in an ecosystem.
energy in plants, transfers between living organisms, and that changing the environment
may alter the amount of energy provided to living organisms.
Objective 1: Compare ways that plants and animals obtain and use energy.
a. Recognize the importance of photosynthesis in using light energy as part of the chemical process
that builds plant materials.
b. Explain how respiration in animals is a process that converts food energy into mechanical and
heat energy.
c. Trace the path of energy from the sun to mechanical energy in an organism (e.g., sunlight - light
energy to plants by photosynthesis to sugars - stored chemical energy to respiration in muscle cell
- usable chemical energy to muscle contraction- mechanical energy).
Objective 2: Generalize the dependent relationships between organisms.
a. Categorize the relationships between organisms (i.e., producer/consumer, predator/prey,
mutualism, parasitism) and provide examples of each.
b. Use models to trace the flow of energy in food chains and food webs.
c. Formulate and test a hypothesis on the effects of air, temperature, water, or light on plants (e.g.,
seed germination, growth rates, seasonal adaptations).
d. Research multiple ways that different scientists have investigated the same ecosystem.
Objective 3: Analyze human influence on the capacity of an environment to sustain living things.
a. Describe specific examples of how humans have changed the capacity of an environment to
support specific life forms (e.g., people create wetlands and nesting boxes that increase the
number and range of wood ducks, acid rain damages amphibian eggs and reduces population of
frogs, clear cutting forests affects squirrel populations, suburban sprawl reduces mule deer winter
range thus decreasing numbers of deer).
b. Distinguish between inference and evidence in a newspaper or magazine article relating to the
effect of humans on the environment.
c. Infer the potential effects of humans on a specific food web.
d. Evaluate and present arguments for and against allowing a specific species of plant or animal to
become extinct, and relate the argument to the of flow energy in an ecosystem.