What's Alive and What's Not         

 Introduction:

The biotic components of the ecosystem are influenced by the Abiotic factors.  The Biotic components include producers, which capture energy from the sun, consumers, which obtain their food form producers, and decomposers which breakdown producers and decomposers when these die. The abiotic factors of the environment determine which producers will develop in any given ecosystem, and hence the nature of the ecosystem. The nonliving aspects of a habitat include the chemical, inorganic, and inanimate components that the living things depend on.  Both the biotic and abiotic factors interact to create an ecosystem.

National Standard Addressed:

This lab addresses the National Standard- Systems, Order and Organization under the category of unifying concepts and processes.  It does this by directing students to a better understanding of the living systems around them.  They can also learn to organize their world by the terms abiotic and biotic.

This lab also addresses the teaching standard of using construction in the classroom.  This can be achieved by allowing the students to generate data sheets, posters or other ways of showing the differences between biotic and abiotic.

Objective and Benchmarks for the Lesson:

This lab is going to demonstrate the distinction between living and nonliving components of your environment.  At the completion of this activity students will be able to identify several abiotic and biotic factors in the environment.  Students will also be able to describe different ecosystems, based on abiotic and biotic factors.   

Materials:

Abiotic and Biotic Factors Data Sheets                  Pencils                                Student Copies of Chart in the Appendix

Procedure:

Walk around outside, ignoring anything that was introduced by human beings, find examples of abiotic and biotic factors.  Fill in the chart on the following page by listing examples, try to fill in all the blanks for each category.

As long as the weather is reasonable, find a place where you are comfortable and not distracted.  Ignore all evidence of human disruption (including your classmates) and consider the natural environment.

Look for WATER!  What direct evidence do you see?  What other things might not look wet but contain water?  Where did the water come from?  Where does it end up?

Things to consider:

How do you know which things are living?

Possible Integration:

The lesson essentially addresses biological science but could also connect to earth science by talking about which things that make up the earth are alive, and which are not.

If ecology is being studied you can also use this lesson to tie into ecosystems and how they are organized.

Critical Concepts:

Biotic and Abiotic Factors            Man-Made    Natural Environment            Aquatic

Terrestrial