Indiana Science HS-ENV1-2

ScienceGrades 9–12Environmental Science

The Standard

Use a computational representation to illustrate that humans are part of Earth's ecosystems and how human activities can, deliberately or inadvertently, alter ecosystems.

Indiana Academic Standards for Science (2023) · Environmental Systems

Teacher's field guide

What This Standard Means

What Students Need to Do: Students use a spreadsheet to model how lawn fertilizer runoff changes pond algae, oxygen, fish, and the fish people catch. They change fertilizer use or add a planted buffer, then explain the effects on the pond and on people.
What Mastery Looks Like: A student can change one input, read the new values, and trace how runoff affects fish catch. They can explain that the model shows possible effects, not exact predictions.
Common Misconceptions: Some students treat people as outside the ecosystem or assume fertilizer only helps plants. Others think runoff always enters ponds on purpose or that a model's numbers are exact predictions.
How to Assess It: Exit ticket: Set fertilizer to 4 and buffer to 1 in the pond spreadsheet. Record runoff, algae, oxygen, and catch, then explain how the fertilizer choice affects people.

Lesson moves

Ways to Teach It

Build a spreadsheet with fertilizer and buffer inputs: runoff = MAX(0, fertilizer - buffer), algae = 2 * runoff, oxygen = 10 - algae, catch = oxygen.
Write two sentences: Why could fertilizing a school lawn lower pond fish catch, and how could a planted buffer change that?
Give pairs fertilizer and buffer cards numbered 0 to 5; have them predict fish catch, check the spreadsheet, and explain misses.
Walk to a school storm drain, note nearby lawns, and test lawn fertilizer and a planted buffer in the spreadsheet.

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