Mississippi Science FB.6.2
The Standard
- FB.6
- Students will understand the interdependence of living organisms and their environment.
Use models to analyze the cycling of matter in an ecosystem (e.g., water, carbon dioxide/oxygen, nitrogen).
2026 Mississippi College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Science · Ecological Principals
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students trace water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen through air, soil, water, and living things in a model. They label arrows to explain how matter moves between places.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can trace carbon from air to plant to animal and back to air, naming photosynthesis and respiration. They can show water evaporating and nitrogen entering plants after soil bacteria fix it. They can show oxygen released by photosynthesis and used in respiration.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think matter disappears when organisms die or water evaporates. They may draw plants getting carbon from soil or taking nitrogen gas straight from the air. Some think only animals respire, so their models never show plants using oxygen.
How to Assess It
- Give students a sketch labeled air, soil, bacteria, grass, and rabbit. Ask them to draw and label two routes: carbon from air to rabbit and back, and nitrogen from air to grass.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Move labeled water, carbon, and nitrogen counters between air, soil, plant, animal, and decomposer cups; name the process for each move.
Ask, 'If a forest burns, where does the carbon in its trees go?' Have students annotate a carbon cycle diagram to support their answer.
Hand out cards labeled photosynthesis, respiration, decomposition, evaporation, and nitrogen fixation; students place each card on the correct arrow in a cycle diagram.
Show a photo of fertilizer runoff into a pond; students draw arrows tracing nitrogen from lawn soil to algae and decomposers.
Keep exploring
Related Standards
- ENV.1.5
Develop and use models to diagram the flow of nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorus through the environment.
- BIO.5.2
Analyze models of the cycling of matter (e.g., carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and water) between abiotic and biotic factors in an ecosystem and evaluate the abil...
- L.7.3.1
Analyze diagrams to provide evidence of the importance of the cycling of water, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen through ecosystems to organisms.
- ENV.3.1
Use a model to describe cycling of carbon through the ocean, atmosphere, soil, and biosphere and how increases in carbon dioxide concentrations have resulted in...
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