Texas TEKS 6.12.A
The Standard
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 light and water, range of temperatures, or soil composition
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Science
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students use observations or data to explain how organisms depend on living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem. They identify when populations compete because food, light, water, suitable temperatures, or soil resources are limited.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students correctly classify ecosystem factors as biotic or abiotic. They use evidence to explain which organisms depend on or compete for a factor and predict what happens when its availability changes.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think plants get food from soil or that sunlight is biotic because plants need it. They may confuse competition with fighting or assume only different species compete. They may also overlook competition among plants for light, water, and soil nutrients.
How to Assess It
- Give students a picture of two plants growing close together under one lamp. Ask them to name one shared resource, classify it, and explain how limited availability affects both plants.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Grow equal radish seedlings with different amounts of light or water, then measure and graph their growth for one week.
Ask students to explain how drought could change competition among grass, shrubs, rabbits, and insects in a field.
Give teams organism and resource cards, then have them race to match each organism with needed biotic and abiotic factors.
Examine a school garden and list where plants may compete for sunlight, water, space, and soil nutrients.
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Printable 6.12.A Worksheet
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Related Standards
- K.12.B
observe and identify the dependence of animals on air, water, food, space, and shelter.
- K.12.A
observe and identify the dependence of plants on air, sunlight, water, nutrients in the soil, and space to grow; and
- 5.12.A
observe and describe how a variety of organisms survive by interacting with biotic and abiotic factors in a healthy ecosystem;
- 5.13.A
analyze the structures and functions of different species to identify how organisms survive in the same environment; and
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