Texas TEKS 6.12

6.12 is a TEKS knowledge and skills statement. These are the student expectations under it.

• 6.12.A

  investigate how organisms and populations in an ecosystem depend on and may compete for biotic factors such as food and abiotic factors such as availability of ...

• 6.12.B

  describe and give examples of predatory, competitive, and symbiotic relationships between organisms, including mutualism, parasitism, and commensalism

• 6.12.C

  describe the hierarchical organization of organism, population, and community within an ecosystem.

01

What Students Need to Do

Students identify how organisms depend on food, light, water, temperature, and soil. They explain competition, predation, mutualism, parasitism, and commensalism using examples. They organize living things as organisms, populations, and communities within ecosystems.

02

What Mastery Looks Like

Students can analyze an ecosystem scenario and identify the resources organisms need or compete for. They can classify relationships, support each choice with evidence, and correctly place examples in the ecological hierarchy.

03

Common Misconceptions

Students may call every close relationship mutualism or assume both organisms benefit in commensalism. They may confuse a population with a community or treat water, soil, and temperature as biotic factors.

04

How to Assess It

Give students a pond diagram with fish, algae, herons, insects, water, and sunlight. Ask them to label two factors, classify one relationship, and identify an organism, population, and community.

1. 01

   Plant radish seeds in cups with different light or water levels, then compare growth and connect the results to resource availability.

2. 02

   Ask students to explain whether a tick on a dog, a bee on a flower, and a barnacle on a whale differ.

3. 03

   Play a relationship card sort where teams match organism pairs to predation, competition, mutualism, parasitism, or commensalism and defend each match.

4. 04

   Survey the schoolyard for organisms, group repeated species into populations, and combine those populations into a community map.

• 1.12

  Organisms and environments. The student knows that the environment is composed of relationships between living organisms and nonliving components. The student i...

• K.12

  Organisms and environments. The student knows that plants and animals depend on the environment to meet their basic needs for survival. The student is expected ...

• 2.13

  Organisms and environments. The student knows that organisms have structures and undergo processes that help them interact and survive within their environments...

• 2.12

  Organisms and environments. The student knows that living organisms have basic needs that must be met through interactions within their environment. The student...