Texas TEKS 8.12.A
The Standard
explain how disruptions such as population changes, natural disasters, and human intervention impact the transfer of energy in food webs in ecosystems
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Science
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students trace how energy moves through a food web before and after a disruption. They explain how one population change can cause direct and indirect changes in other populations.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Given a food web and a disruption, students predict which populations will rise or fall. They support each prediction by tracing changed energy pathways between producers and consumers.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may reverse arrows, thinking they point from consumer to food. They may assume every population changes in the same direction or that only directly connected organisms are affected.
How to Assess It
- Show grass to grasshopper to frog to hawk, plus grass to rabbit to hawk. Ask students to explain two effects of a grasshopper decline.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Use organism cards and yarn to build a pond food web, then remove the algae card and trace which pathways lose energy.
Write a claim explaining how a wildfire could affect hawks, even if no hawks are killed directly.
Teams draw disruption cards, revise a food web, and score points for each prediction supported with a correct energy pathway.
Analyze a short data table showing pond populations before and after fertilizer runoff, then explain the changes using the food web.
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Printable 8.12.A Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 8.12.A, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
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Related Standards
- 3.12.C
describe how natural changes to the environment such as floods and droughts cause some organisms to thrive and others to perish or move to new locations; and
- 5.12.B
predict how changes in the ecosystem affect the cycling of matter and flow of energy in a food web; and
- 8.12.B
describe how primary and secondary ecological succession affect populations and species diversity after ecosystems are disrupted by natural events or human acti...
- 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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