Under the Sea: Food Chains for Aquatic Life
The article discussed this week can be found below:
National Geographic Society. (2019). The
Earth’s vast food chain under the seas. Retrieved from Newsela website: https://newsela.com/read/natgeo-marine-food-chain/id/49887/#
In
continuing our journey on finding the best literature for our students, I am
taking all of my observations and thoughts from last week and I am keeping
those concepts and ideas in mind as I continue. This week, Pearl and I decided
to select an article that continues to support our topic of ecosystems and food
chains. We decided to continue with this topic because there are multiple
factors that contribute to the appearance of a food web or chain. For instance,
I mentioned that high school students learn about the environmental factors that give
rise to food chains and this week our article focuses on one of the ecosystems
for living organisms and that is marine or aquatic habitats. When conducting on
our search for articles that pertain to food webs, we wanted to continue
finding ones that could be applicable in both middle and high school biology classrooms.
After we compared our individual searches, we ended up going with Pearl’s pick
for this week. Thus, the article we agreed on for this week was “The Earth’s vast
food chain under the seas” published through the National Geographic Society.
While students are reading this article, it is our hope that students will gain
more concrete knowledge on food webs to determine how organisms are dependent
on one another to maintain survival.
When
I first read the article, I really appreciated the simplicity of it. From my
point of view the article was written from a point of view that presents a
concept that needs to be understood (Buehl, 2014). In this case, the concept is
the food chain that exists amongst aquatic life. This article in from my point
of view had a chronological flow to it where there was a brief introduction and
from there were headings that represented one of the four tiers on the food
chain. These tiers include primary producers or photoautotrophs, the
herbivores, the carnivores, and finally the top predators (National Geographic
Society, 2019). In addition to the four tiers, there is also a fifth section
that discussed the alternative food chains.
In the beginning of this article, it talks about how the aquatic food
chain highlights the known species and that there are some unknown species that
may contribute to these food chains as well. From there, the following heading
provided examples of organisms that can be comprised in each link in the food
chain and discussed the methods in which these organisms obtain their food.
As
previously mentioned, phytoplankton is a living organism that is included as an
example of a primary producer/ photoautotroph. However, the article that we
utilized last week did not include a crucial detail about these phototrophs.
That ideal is that phytoplankton is classified as a microorganism that cannot
not be seen in plain sight. This makes me think that students need to be aware
of microorganisms because out of all the Biology classes I have taken, I have
never been apart of a class where there was a huge emphasis on aquatic food
chains. For instance, my years in both middle and high school Biology placed a
larger emphasis on learning the terrestrial food chains. In reference to this
type of food chain, a classic example comes to mind. The one example I was
always taught was the plants act as the primary producers, small herbivores like
birds are the primary consumers, the secondary consumers or carnivores such as
snakes eat the birds, and the top predator (hawk or eagle) eats the snake.
Knowing this motivates me to make sure that I am providing multiple examples of
different food chains to best aide my students in their comprehension of the
topic.
Once
I completed my initial reading, I talked with Pearl about the age group of
students this article would be the most appropriate for. After our
deliberation, we both agreed that this article could work for both middle and
high school Biology students. This is mainly due to the ideal that the article
was very accessible and would be easy to follow for any student that comes across
the article. Due to my target students would be high school students, having
text that is highly accessible will allow for me to assess their knowledge in a
manner that will challenge my students to think outside the box. As Sara
Wessling mentioned in a previously assigned video, that the more difficult the
task we are asking our students to complete, the easier the text should be for
our students to comprehend and connect with (Wessling, 2013). Knowing this information makes me
more mindful for which engagement strategies I give my students in the future.
As
previously mentioned, Pearl and I are both agree about this article
being beneficial for both middle and high school life science biology students.
In looking at the learning standards presented in Guilford’s science journal,
there is one standard I think relates best with this article. This standard is for
the high school life science two sub six which was to “Evaluate the claims,
evidence, and reasoning that the complex interactions in ecosystems maintain
relatively consistent numbers and types of organisms in stable conditions but
changing conditions may result in a new ecosystem” (Guilford, 2017, p. 31). I
felt that this standard relates the most to the selected article for this
module week because this article presents new evidence that allows for students
to look at ecosystems and food chains in a different light.
For
this week, we are to complete the PAT after our initial readings to determine a
preliminary frame of text. In this initial analysis of text, we are able to
determine the main take home messages that we picked up on from both the
viewpoint of a student and educator. From there, we assign an engagement
strategy for our partner to complete while rereading the text. This week, Perel
assigned me to use a concept or definition map and I assigned her to complete a
pyramid diagram. I felt comfortable utilizing concept map strategy because I
feel as though this is an effective way for students to get all the essential
information on a topic while keeping the notes on one page. I think this type
of approach is helpful for the ideal of not overwhelming our students with an
overload of information when presenting a new topic or concept to them. While I
think that this strategy is great for note taking, I feel that this strategy
may not be the best for aiding students in their comprehension of text that may
be higher in difficulty.
When
I first assigned Pearl to complete the pyramid diagram, I was thinking of the
traditional pyramid diagram we are exposed to as biology students to familiarize
how the amount of energy becomes reduced the further up the food chain you go.
However, I appreciated the different take that Pearl took because with the
question of how does one determine how one organism impacts another? In the top
of the pyramid, the topic of tracking organism behavior as it relates to the
food web. In moving to the middle component of the pyramid Pearl emphasizes
concepts such as length of food chains, accessibility to finding food chains,
and the role each organism plays in the food chain. In the bottom tier, components
are the resources each organism needs to obtain their food source, the
simplicity of identifying the food chains that are seen and the implications of
not being able to truly study food chains that have faced extinction. Overall, I
think that the completion of the pyramid diagram would be best in assisting our
students in forming the most connections because it allows for one to determine
the overall main idea and from that, our students can pull supporting details
that contribute the final picture of the way food webs are structured. Once our
students are able to form these connections, students will be able to store the
connection into their long-term memory in the hopes that they will be able to
retrieve that information when asked to complete a task.
References
Buehl, D.
(2014). Classroom Strategies for
Interactive Learning (4th ed.). Newark, DE:
International
Reading Association. Guilford, J., Bustamante, A., Mackura, K., Hirsch, S., Lyon, E.,
& Estrada, K. (2017). Text
Savvy. The Science Teacher, 84 (1), 31-56. Wessling,
S. B. (2013, January 22). Simplifying Text Complexity. [Video File].
Retrieved from:
ReplyDeleteBri
It was so interesting to see how many groups this week chose to stick with the same topic as the previous week and find text that further develops student understanding. It is important to incorporate a variety of text with different formats. I think you and Pearl did a great job finding a text to incorporate to your biology classrooms. Looking at the text it seems short and precise and incorporates a lot of great vocabulary when discussing food chains. I like that the information is broken into easy to understand groups and this makes the text much more accessible. Even with a higher frequency of vocabulary words, the text could still be easily digested in a high school class and even a middle school class with the right instructional techniques. If you teach your students to read through a scientific lens it will get students to think in a cause and effect manor. As they read they should be “emphasizing conceptual organizations, such as classifying and categorizing” (Buehl, 2017). If you were to use it in both a middle school and high school course, I would focus more on how the information could be compared with other resources to increase rigor.
I liked that you guys chose to use two visual reading techniques to help your students with reading comprehension. If you use the pyramid diagram I would make sure that you have specific directions for how students should complete the diagram and make sure that it is more difficult than just recording diagrams that can be easily found online. I was kind of surprised that you didn’t think the concept map wouldn’t be as efficient. One comprehension strategy to guide thinking you might want to think about for this activity could also be gallery images. This is another way that students can create a visual representation of the different levels of species in the food chain (McLaughlin 2015).
Buehl, D. (2017). Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning. Portsmouth, NH:
Stenhouse Publishers.
McLaughlin, M., (2015). Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Boston: Pearson.
Bri, I enjoyed the article you chose this week. I think that there is a good mix of vocabulary like predators and herbivores and it is well organized with the subheadings and levels of the chain. I think that yes the article is simplistic but it breaks down the necessary information for teaching the food chain. I think that this article is for more middle school or maybe ninth grade based on is simplicity. I think with the amount of vocabulary words I thought to be incorporated in the reading, I think your strategy of using a concept or definition map is a great way for students to understand any rare or vocabulary words they may find difficult to understand. It also allows students to organize their understandings. I think the text is very informational and I found it very engaging and informative.
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