Students will be asked to explain and illustrate interactions within an ecosystem. Students will then work in pairs or groups to create a food web/food chain. Wrap up: once students have had time to work, discuss results as a group.

Students hunt for producers, consumers, and decomposers, and look for evidence of interactions between living things. Observations are recorded on the activity sheet. Wrap up: Discuss student findings. Why are each of these (producers, consumers, and decomposers) important for the natural area?

Discuss forests, factors that affect forests, biotic vs. abiotic, producers, consumers, decomposers and investigation reports. Students find and report on three forest invaders (e.g. ants, mushrooms, fungi, wind, etc.) Wrap up: what “invaders” are affecting our schoolyard forest?

Students explore the schoolyard to find tallys of different types of plants. Students must then convert the tallys into fractions. Wrap up: Discuss findings, conversions from tallys to fractions, reducing fractions, etc.

Students tally specific plants around the school yard, and then convert the tallys into both fractions and decimals. Wrap up: Discuss results, did different fractions have the same decimal? (introduction to reducing fractions)