Texas TEKS 5.12.B
The Standard
predict how changes in the ecosystem affect the cycling of matter and flow of energy in a food web
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Science
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students examine a food web after a change such as drought, habitat loss, or a new predator. They predict population changes and trace effects on energy transfer and matter cycling.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students identify direct and indirect effects using the organisms and arrows in the food web. They explain that energy moves through feeding while matter returns through waste and decomposition.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may read food web arrows backward or consider only the organism directly affected. They may think matter disappears when organisms die or that energy cycles back through decomposers.
How to Assess It
- Give students a food web with grass, grasshoppers, frogs, hawks, and fungi. Ask what happens after grass decreases and require one prediction about energy and one about matter.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Build a food web with yarn and organism cards, remove a plant after a drought, then trace affected links.
Write a response to this prompt: What would happen to matter and energy if decomposers disappeared?
Sort ecosystem change cards, then race to match each change with two supported food web predictions.
Use cafeteria scraps and a compost sample to trace matter back to soil and energy back to sunlight.
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Printable 5.12.B Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 5.12.B, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
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Related Standards
- 6.5.E
analyze and explain how energy flows and matter cycles through systems and how energy and matter are conserved through a variety of systems;
- 3.5.E
investigate the flow of energy and cycling of matter through systems;
- 4.12.B
describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy through food webs, including the roles of the Sun, producers, consumers, and decomposers; and
- 3.12.B
identify and describe the flow of energy in a food chain and predict how changes in a food chain such as removal of frogs from a pond or bees from a field affec...
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