Biology Curriculum Map

STANDARD I: Students will understand that living organisms interact with one another and their environment.
Objective 2: Explain relationships between matter cycles and organisms.
Indicator / Main Ideas/ILOS / Learning activities-Source
  1. Use diagrams to trace the
Movement of matter through a
cycle in a variety of biological communities and ecosystems. /
  • Cycles include carbon, oxygen, nitrogen,water cycles. Water cycle should need the least instruction.
  • Do not include excessive vocabulary or understanding of molecular structures when discussing nitrogen cycle.
  • An ecological community is defined as a group of actually or potentially interacting species living in the same place.
current/lectures/ecol_com/ecol_com.html /
  • Core Tracker/MC test
  • Nitrogen Bomb
  • Carbon Cycle
  • Ecosystem in a Jar
  • Matter Cycles Reading
  • Nitrogen Cycle Reading/Game
  • Water Cycle in a Flask

  1. Explain how water is a limiting
factor in various ecosystems. /
  • Limiting factors are environmental
influences that constrain the productivity of organisms, populations, or communities and prevent them from achieving their full biological potential which could be realized under optimal conditions. Limiting factors can be single elements or a group of related factors.
Limiting Factor /
  • Whats the Limit?

  1. Distinguish between inference and evidence in a newspaper, magazine, journal, or Internet article that addresses an issue related to human impact on
cycles of matter in an
ecosystem and determine the bias
in the article. /
  • Inference is the process of drawing a conclusion by applying clues (of logic, statistics etc.) to observations
or hypotheses; or by interpolating the next logical step
in an intuited pattern. The conclusion drawn is also
called an inference.
  • In scientific research, evidence is accumulated through observations of phenomena that occur in the natural
world, or which are created as experiments in a
laboratory or other controlled conditions /
  • Separating Fact from Fiction

  1. Evaluate the impact of personal
choices in relation to the cycling of
matter within an ecosystem /
  • Examples include: impact of automobiles on
the carbon cycle, or on landfills of processed
and packaged foods. /
  • The Commons
  • Constructed Response Assessment

Highlighted words are Core Vocabulary-Science Language Students Need to Know and Use.