SC.7.L.17.2

In this interactive dive through Australia's Great Barrier Reef, discover relationships that have evolved between the resident organisms. Some are predators and prey; others compete for space, food, or mates; and still others are dependent or codependent on each other. Select one of four reef zones, then click on a type of relationship, predation and parasitism, competition or commensalism and mutualism to learn more about these relationships among reef creatures.

Type: Educational Game

Students will assume the role of the prosecution team or the defense team during jury selection of a case where a Florida panther is charged with the predation of a deer.  Teams will learn about the jury selection process in criminal trials and apply their knowledge of the roles and relationships between species in an ecosystem to develop a method for selecting a fair jury in this model eliciting activity.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations.  Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson plan, students will apply knowledge of roles and relationships in an ecosystem to develop a defense strategy in an imaginary trial where a panther is being prosecuted for predation of deer. They will explore the roles of various consumers in an ecosystem, their places in a food web, and the impact of limiting factors on populations (and vice-versa). Along the way, students will compare the rule of nature to the rule of law that people live by and consider the importance of the 6th Amendment in protecting the rights of citizens in the United States.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text designed to support reading in the content area. The article introduces readers to a new threat to giant panda survival: horses. The article explains how both species are competing for the limited bamboo supply in the Wolong Nature Reserve. This lesson includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text intended to support reading in the content area. The article describes one common virus that takes a sneaky route to success. It doesn't kill its leafy hosts, instead, it makes infected plants smell more attractive to bees. This ensures the virus will have a new generation of the plants to host it in the future. This lesson includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an article that explains how bees have made an evolutionary adaptation of shorter tongues due to their flower food source moving up a mountain as a result of climate change. This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. This lesson includes two note-taking guides, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, and sample answer keys.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an article that introduces readers to the importance and role of pollinators, factors contributing to their current decline, and easy steps that can be taken to help pollinators. This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. This lesson includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

Dr. Alex Wilson of the University of Miami is an evolutionary biologist whose research centers on symbiotic relationships. "" from Day's Edge Productions on Vimeo is the last of four films created with funding from the National Science Foundation. This lesson, which includes a pre-test, slide presentation, and activity, was developed to support the learning concepts provided by Dr. Wilson's films.

Type: Lesson Plan

Dr. Alex Wilson of the University of Miami is an evolutionary biologist whose research centers on symbiotic relationships. In this short animated film, she explains exactly how the bacteria aids the aphid. The film explores how scientists use what they learn to seek evolutionary patterns in nature. "" from Day's Edge Productions on Vimeo is the third of four films created with funding from the National Science Foundation. This lesson, which includes a pre-test, slide presentation, activity, and formative assessment was developed to support the learning concepts provided by Dr. Wilson's films.

Type: Lesson Plan

Dr. Alex Wilson of the University of Miami is an evolutionary biologist whose research centers on symbiotic relationships. In this short animated film, she introduces the concept of symbiosis to the viewers. This is the second of four films created with funding from the National Science Foundation, from Day's Edge Productions on Vimeo. This lesson, which includes a pre-test, slide presentation, activity, and formative assessment, was developed to support the learning concepts provided by Dr. Wilson's films.

Type: Lesson Plan

Dr. Alex Wilson of the University of Miami is an evolutionary biologist whose research centers on symbiotic relationships. In this short animated film, she introduces the concept of symbiosis to the viewers. from Day's Edge Productions on Vimeo is the first of four films created with funding from the National Science Foundation. This lesson, which includes a pre-test, slide presentation, activity, and formative assessment was developed to support the learning concepts provided by Dr. Wilson's films.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this MEA, students will decide how many wolves to introduce into Yellowstone National Park's ecosystem. The number of wolves could influence many factors, from the tourism industry to local farming businesses, as well as the populations of other species in the area. Students must choose to introduce the number of wolves they feel will be most beneficial to the preservation of Yellowstone National Park as determined by the mission statement of Yellowstone and the National Park Service.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson introduces the concept of an invasive species, the Burmese python, and its impact on other animal populations in the Florida Everglades. Students will interpret and evaluate graphs to investigate correlation and causation as well as evaluate claims using evidence.

Type: Lesson Plan

Through a combination of videos and class discussions, students will be introduced to definitions and examples of symbiotic relationships. Students will solidify their definitions of relationships with an included, fun, picture-based interactive quiz. Guided practice includes an interactive game to help students deepen knowledge with guiding questions and short organized video clips. The topic is further explored through independent research on an ecosystem and the relationships between them which may be used as a summative assessment (rubric, instructions, and example included).

This lesson will take approximately two class periods to complete.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students examine and research examples of symbioses that exist between organisms that live in the ocean. They watch two informative videos that contain many examples mutualisms, parisitisms, and commensalisms, and are asked to categorize and write informational texts about relationships shown in the videos.

Type: Lesson Plan

This activity asks students to become scientists who are studying the components of a bald eagle's diet. They will collect data by pulling prey chips from an envelope and recording this data. They then graph their research data, draw conclusions about what a bald eagle eats, and share their conclusions with the class.

Type: Lesson Plan

This 5E lesson plan introduces and explores the symbiotic relationships of the monarch butterfly in a Florida garden. Reading strategies, short video clips, and assessments are included.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this activity the students will be learning unit specific vocabulary, and then bring it to life by creating a classroom ecosystem. They will each play a role in the ecosystem and be cycled in and out as appropriate. The ecosystem will look at the relationships amongst organisms (commensalism, parasitism, and mutualism), and how a singular event can crash an interdependent ecosystem.

Type: Lesson Plan

"…Everything affecting the gopher tortoise's habitat affects the tortoise and … eventually affects all other organisms in its ecosystem. Efforts to save the gopher tortoise are really a manifestation of our desire to preserve intact, significant pieces of the biosphere. …We must preserve…the gopher tortoise and other species in similar predicaments, for if we do not, we lose a part of our humanity, a part of our habitat, and ultimately our world." — Dr. George W. Folkerts, "The Gopher Tortoise: A Species in Decline"

The gopher tortoise of the southeastern United States is a reptile that creates and lives in a subterranean burrow primarily in dry upland habitats. The are also found among coastal dunes. More than 350 species depend upon the gopher tortoise burrow for protection from temperature extremes and periodic fires. The fires, in turn, ensure that the canopy is open for plentiful sunlight. Low growing vegetation is the tortoise's primary diet and depends on open sunny areas. The animal species living in the burrow are known as commensals and include hundreds of invertebrates and vertebrates that would not survive without the burrows these tortoises create. This lesson is designed for students to deepen their understanding about symbiotic relationships and, most importantly, learn that the removal of a keystone species (the gopher tortoise) affects the entire food web of the habitats in which these inhabitants exist.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson will use a hands-on activity to explore symbiotic relationships and interactions between organisms in a Florida scrub ecosystem. Class discussion and a group activity engages students in active learning and provides an opportunity for students and teachers to assess understanding throughout the lesson. A short-answer written assignment allows for students to organize their thoughts and for the teacher to conduct a final assessment.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson introduces, enforces and assesses students on three types of symbiotic relationships (mutualism, commensalism and parasitism).

Type: Lesson Plan

A long-term project in which students create a labeled ecosystem diorama out of a recycled pizza box as they complete an introductory ecology unit.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is an introductory lesson in which students describe, explain, and give examples of types of symbiotic relationships, including mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson is designed for hands-on learning about how organisms are interdependent. Students will go exploring in their school yard identifying living and nonliving things. Students will be guided with a list of things to find, where they can take pictures or collect them to take back to the classroom for further exploration. Students will then research and organize their findings identifying organisms based on terms learned in class. They will create an iMovie, PowerPoint or poster and will then be present to the class.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this MEA, students will investigate the introduction of a non-native, i.e. invasive, species to the Florida Everglades: the Burmese Python. Students will investigate the complex predator-prey relationship and learn why this could damage the ecosystem permanently. Students will analyze a set of data to determine which method of eradication would be best and most effective, considering factors such as cost, the amount of man-power necessary to implement it, the effect it would have on the python population, and its impact on other species.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students are assigned one of Florida's ecosystems and are guided through a series of lessons that cover SC.7.L.17.1, SC.7.L.17.2, SC.7.L.17.3, culminating in a project.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students explore morphology (body shape) of fish and how they can indicate the fish"s lifestyle.

Type: Lesson Plan

This review game is designed to be part 4 of a 4 part series covering Interdependence. The first two lessons are Powerpoints that go over the information in the game. The third lesson is a biomes lab activity. This can be used as a stand alone activity, however - just make sure that you preview the questions and have covered this material with your students before presenting it to the class.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a detailed lesson based on the germination of seeds, science vocabulary of plants, diseases, and insect infestations with tomato plants. Tomatoes grow nutrients that the human body needs to survive. It is a companion lesson to: Survival Journal Parts 1 and 2 available on CPALMS.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will design two outdoor gardens, 1) a raised garden bed and 2) a ground level garden (traditional). Students will, with help of the teacher, till the ground with removal of ground cover, build border for garden, add soil, attach poles with string to create a life size graph all so they can grow tomatoes and plot the data easily in their survival journals.This is Part 2 of a 4-Part Project on Survival.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson is intended as the first part of a 4 part series. Part 1 is a powerpoint discussing terminology in Ecology including abiotic/biotic factors; symbiotic relationships [descriptions and examples of all 3]; producer/consumers; predator/prey; food chain;food web. Part 2 is a powerpoint that covers the biomes of the world and incorporates the terminology from part 1. Part 3 is a biomes lab activity, and Part 4 is a jeopardy review activity.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will collaboratively work towards understanding symbiotic relationships in various ecosystems. Activities include KWL chart, short Youtube Clip, Symbiotic Sea Social, Symbiosis Scavenger Hunt, Symbiotic Style Four Corners, and creating a cumulative Symbiotic Diagram of an ecosystem of students' choice.

Type: Lesson Plan

Explore relationships among organisms, including mutualism, predation, parasitism, competition, and commensalism in this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Explore relationships between key species in Kenya and learn how they interact with each other. 

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Patrick Milligan shares his research on invasive ant species in the Kenyan savannah.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Patrick Milligan discusses the relationship of organisms in the Kenyan savannah.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Dr. Andrea Larsen explains how fish microbiota are connected to fish health for aquaculture applications.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

This tutorial is designed to help secondary science teachers learn how to incorporate literacy skills into their science curriculum. This tutorial will demonstrate how teachers can teach students to distinguish among facts, reasoned judgements, and speculation. The focus on literacy across content areas is intended to help foster students' reading, writing, and thinking skills in multiple disciplines.

Click "View Site" to open a full-screen version.

Type: Professional Development

In this activity, the students will investigate the inter-relationships of predator and prey and the diversity of food items in the sea.

Type: Teaching Idea

Students will identify the differences between an open and closed circulatory system; bilateral and radial symmetry; and an exoskeleton and hydrostatic skeleton. Students will define various terminology associated with invertebrates. Students will describe the differences between the three types of symbiotic relationships (parasitism, mutualism, and commensalism).

Type: Teaching Idea

This informational text (intended to support reading in the content area) describes how one common virus takes a sneaky route to success. It doesn’t kill its leafy hosts, instead, it makes infected plants smell more attractive to bees. This ensures the virus will have a new generation of the plants to host it in the future.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. In parts of China, pandas are threatened by horses. The pandas have a specific diet - bamboo that grows on the gently sloping areas far from human populations. But some farmers allow their horses to roam free and graze upon bamboo, taking away the only source of food for pandas.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource supports reading in the content area. The text explains how bees have made an evolutionary adaptation of shorter tongues. This adaptation is due to their mutualistic relationship with their flower food source moving up a mountain as a result of climate change.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is designed to support reading in the content area. The article introduces the reader to the importance and role of pollinators, factors contributing to their decline, and easy steps that can be taken to help pollinators.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. Prey species exhibit a variety of behaviors to avoid getting eaten by predators. For example, some animals may run away, find shelter, or move to a safer area if they sense predators are near. This article describes the responses of two prey species in detail: tree frog tadpoles that hatch early when predators are close by, and elk that avoid eating in dangerous areas when wolves are present. Their responses to fear can affect not only the prey species, but the entire food web.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The text describes a newly found parasitic bacterial protein, SAP54, which turns host plants into non-flowering "zombies" for the sole benefit of the parasites. This knowledge may enable scientists to help plants defend against these attackers.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. Not many people will say they like bees, but they are a very necessary part of our environment. Scientists are struggling to find an answer—and, hopefully, a solution—as to why so many bee colonies are vanishing. They believe there are several environmental factors that are killing these insects.

Type: Text Resource

This site from the Sea World Education Department provides an overview of corals and the reefs that they form. Many aspects of these invertebrates are covered, including descriptions, their scientific classification, their habitat and distribution, reef ecosystem, and the conservation of coral reefs worldwide.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text is intended to support reading in the content area. This is a news article describing the partnership between acacia trees and the ants which live on them, as well as the manipulation of the ants into an addictive relationship by the tree.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text is intended to support reading in the content area. Researchers found that the hungrier an agouti is the more likely it is to take risks to find food; in turn, they determined that the more risks an agouti took the more likely it was to be killed by an ocelot.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The text presents scientific evidence that spiders obtain their nutrition from both plants and animals. Traditionally spiders have been classified as carnivores. This new evidence indicates that they are omnivores.

Type: Text Resource

Click "View Site" to open a full-screen version. This tutorial is designed to help secondary science teachers learn how to integrate literacy skills within their science curriculum. This tutorial will demonstrate a series of steps that teachers can teach students to help them determine the central ideas of a science text. The focus on literacy across content areas is designed to help students independently build knowledge in different disciplines through reading and writing.

Type: Tutorial