Pre-Visit Activities : Communities and Ecosystems
Third - Fifth Grade Online Curriculum : Communities

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MAIN

Focus Question
What makes up a South Carolina community? What makes up a South Carolina ecosystem?

Activity Synopsis
Students will be given clues on cards about biotic and abiotic factors from three ecosystems within three different regions of South Carolina; a blackwater swamp from the Coastal Plain region, a mountain stream from the Mountain region and a rocky reef from the Ocean region. They will have to use those clues to determine in which regional ecosystem they belong.

Time Frame
This activity should take approximately 30-45 minutes, depending on class size.

Student Key Terms

Teacher Key Terms

OBJECTIVES
The learner will be able to:

STANDARDS

Grade Level

Standards

3rd Grade

3-1.1, 3-1.3, 3-1.6, 3-2.2, 3-2.3, 3-2.4, 3-3.5

4th Grade

4-1.1, 4-1.4, 4-1.6, 4-2.2, 4-2.5

5th Grade

5-1.1, 5-2.2, 5-2.3, 5-2.5
* Bold standards are the main standards addressed in this activity.

Third Grade Indicators

3-1.1 Classify objects by two of their properties (attributes).
3-1.3

Generate questions such as “what if?” or “how?” about objects, organisms, and events in the environment and use those questions to conduct a simple scientific investigation.
3-1.6 Infer meaning from data communicated in graphs, tables, and diagrams.
3-2.2

Explain how physical and behavioral adaptations allow organisms to survive (including hibernation, defense, locomotion, movement, food obtainment, and camouflage for animals and seed dispersal, color, and response to light for plants).
3-2.3 Recall the characteristics of an organism’s habitat that allow the organism to survive there.
3-2.4

Explain how changes in the habitats of plants and animals affect their survival.
3-3.5 Illustrate Earth’s saltwater and freshwater features (including oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, and glaciers).

Fourth Grade Indicators

4-1.1 Classify observations as either quantitative or qualitative.
4-1.4

Distinguish among observations, predictions, and inferences.
4-1.6

Construct and interpret diagrams, tables, and graphs made from recorded measurements and observations.
4-2.2 Explain how the characteristics of distinct environments (including swamps, rivers and streams, tropical rain forests, deserts, and the polar regions) influence the variety of organisms in each.
4-2.5

Explain how an organism’s patterns of behavior are related to its environment (including the kinds and the number of other organisms present, the availability of food and other resources, and the physical characteristics of the environment).

Fifth Grade Indicators
5-1.1 Identify questions suitable for generating a hypothesis.
5-2.2

Summarize the composition of an ecosystem, considering both biotic factors (including populations to the level of microorganisms and communities) and abiotic factors.

5-2.3

Compare the characteristics of different ecosystems (including estuaries/salt marshes, oceans, lakes and ponds, forests, and grasslands).
5-2.5

Explain how limiting factors (including food, water, space, and shelter) affect populations in ecosystems.

BACKGROUND

Key Points
Key Points will give you the main information you should know to teach the activity.

  • Populations are a group of living things in a particular area that all belong to the same species.
  • A community consists of all of the living things that inhabit a particular area.
  • A community is an assemblage of populations; it consists of all of the populations that share the same environment.
  • An ecosystem includes all of the abiotic factors as well as the communities that exist in a certain area. Abiotic factors are those factors that are not living. Important examples of abiotic factors include water, temperature, light, soil and wind. In many ways, the abiotic factors of a particular area define the communities that live there.

Top

Detailed Information
 Detailed Information gives more in-depth background to increase your own knowledge, in case you want to expand upon the activity or you are asked detailed questions by students.

Despite being 40th in size among the states, South Carolina has one of the highest biodiversity levels of any state in the country. Regions ranging from Mountains to the Ocean, South Carolina supports a variety of populations, communities and ecosystems. Populations are a group of living things in a particular area that all belong to the same species. Humans, porkfish, river otters, mountain laurel trees and pitcher plants are all examples of different populations.

A community consists of all of the living things that inhabit a particular area. A community is an assemblage of populations that share an environment. The environment can be as small as a rotted log or as large as a continent. In the Mountain region, a community could consist of river otters, trout, mayflies, mountain laurel, cardinals and flowering dogwood.

An ecosystem includes all of the abiotic factors as well as the communities that exist in a certain area. Abiotic factors are those factors in an environment that are not living. Important examples of abiotic factors include water, temperature, light, soil and wind. In many ways, the abiotic factors of a particular area define the communities that live there.

South Carolina is divided into five major landform regions: the Mountains, Piedmont, the Sandhills, the Coastal Plain and the Coast. The vast Atlantic ocean is located off of the coast of South Carolina. Each of these regions is characterized by a unique set of physical factors, which in turn affects the animals and plants that are able to form communities there.

The smallest in area of the five regions, the Mountain region is located in the northwest corner of the state and found in only three counties. It is part of the Blue Ridge chain of the Appalachian Mountains. It is an area characterized by mountains and valleys, rocky outcrops, waterfalls and fast moving streams. Mountains in this region can be above 3,000 ft in elevation. The climate in this region tends to be cooler and less humid than the rest of the state but with a higher rainfall amount, ranging from 60 to 76 inches a year.

Mountain streams are a unique habitat in South Carolina. Found only in the mountains of the northwest corner of South Carolina, this habitat makes up only two percent of the state's freshwater habitats. The water in these streams is provided by abundant rainfall and groundwater springs. These streams erode away the soil in their beds leaving a rocky bottom. The water of mountain streams tends to be cool in temperature, clean and highly oxygenated. Streams tend to be shallow with areas of rapid moving water and slower-moving pools. Many plants and animals can be found along the banks of mountain streams.

The Piedmont region is in the northwest of the state and extends from the mountains to the fall line that crosses the state through Columbia. It is a generally flat area with gently sloping hills and wide river valleys. As most of the soil in the piedmont is composed of clay, a substance difficult for water to flow through, very little rainwater can soak into the soil. Much of the rainwater runs off to join the many streams and rivers that criss-cross the landscape. The Piedmont is a warm, humid area. Because of its distance from the ocean, it does not receive the temperature regulating effects the ocean provides and thus has wider temperature extremes than the coast has. It has a rainfall range of 45 to 60 inches a year.

The Coastal Plain is an area of flat land that comprises more than half of the state's area. Though hilly in certain places, most of the plain is flat and slowly lowers in elevation from the Sandhills to the coast. This flatness results in many wetlands as the slope is often too gradual to cause water to continuously flow. The climate of the region is warm and humid with an average yearly rainfall of 46 inches.

Blackwater swamps occur in the Coastal Plain. Because of the flatness of the plain, the blackwater rivers are slow-moving and follow a winding, meandering path. When rainfall amounts are high, the water in these rivers floods over the banks into the woods and creates the swamp habitat. Depending on rainfall amounts this swamp habitat can last a few days or a few months. The still, warm water of blackwater swamps is filled with organic material and provides habitat for a number of plants and animals.

The Coast is an area of land at the edge of the ocean that extends from the North Carolina to the Georgia border that is about ten miles wide. Of all the regions of South Carolina, the Coast is the most dynamic. The salinity of the rivers and wetlands in this region change throughout the day as tides rise and fall. Barrier islands, beaches and salt marshes will change in size and shape as waves and ocean currents erode and deposit sand. Because of sea breezes and proximity to the ocean, the Coast tends to be cooler than areas even just a few miles more inland from the coast. The Coast tends to be warm and humid with abundant rainfall.

The ocean is a body of water that has high salinity and generally stable conditions. Though hurricanes and other major storms can stir up the shallow waters above the continental shelf, ocean waters are generally not affected by the weather. The average temperature of the ocean remains fairly stable from year to year. Off the coast of South Carolina, the ocean seafloor is generally covered by a sandy or muddy bottom. In certain areas, however, rocky reefs jut upwards from the bottom of the ocean floor.

Rocky reefs occur in the waters off of South Carolina's coast. These rocky reefs, in large part, are formed from the remains of organisms, like corals and tube-building worms, which lived many, many years ago. These rocky reefs provide a hard substrate to which other organisms can attach. If sunlight can penetrate to the depths of a rocky reef location, seaweeds attach to the reef and thrive. Other small animals like barnacles, sponges, tunicates and soft corals also attach and grow upon the reef. The seaweeds and small animals that make their home on the reef attract larger predators, like sheepshead and porkfish. Rocky reefs are like an oasis of life surrounded by more desolate areas of sandy seafloor. Where rocky reefs occur, an abundance of life abounds.

Because these regions are so different in their abiotic characteristics, they support very different communities. By knowing the abiotic characteristics of an area, one can guess what kinds of animals might live in its community. In turn, knowing the habitat needs and adaptations of an organism can be used to determine what environment it might inhabit. This relationship between organisms and environments defines communities, and also shows how interconnected the natural world is.

PROCEDURES

Materials
Ecosystem clue cards (You will need all of these cards for this activity):

Procedure

  1. Introduce the concept of community. Teachers can engage students by showing them a picture of a jungle or a desert. Ask students to name all of the plants and animals that might use each environment as a habitat. Explain that because these plants and animals live together in the same environment they are known as a community (like people living in the same town belong to a community). Explain that a community is made up of all of the living things (plants and animals) in an environment. Explain that the things that are not living in an environment (water, air, rock) affect which plants and animals live there.
  2. Introduce the concept of ecosystems. Ask students to list some of the nonliving things in a jungle or desert. Explain that an ecosystem is made up of all of the members of a community (all of the plants and animals) plus all of the nonliving things (or physical factors) in their environment. Ensure that students know what the difference is between a community and an ecosystem.
  3. Advise students that they are about to receive a special card. Tell students that most of the cards represent things that can be found in one of South Carolina's regions. Tell them that their job will be to use the clues on their cards to figure out:

    4. Younger students can be given additional clues at the beginning of the class, if needed. For example, you can place blown up copies of the region cards (ocean, coastal plain and mountains) in three separate locations around the classroom and introduce the characteristics of each region to begin the activity OR students could be told that they will receive cards representing things that can be found in either the Mountains in a mountain stream, in the Coastal Plain in a blackwater swamp or in the Ocean on a rocky reef. This type of introduction, however, may limit student interactions and discussions at the onset of the activity. As the teacher, you will need to decide what level of scaffolding will work for your class.
  4. Tell students that three of them will receive a South Carolina region card and that three of them will receive a South Carolina ecosystem card. Once all of the cards are handed out, this group of six students should first determine which ecosystem is found in each region. All of the other students in the class will need to rely on the information provided on that group of six students' clue cards to determine in which region and ecosystem they belong.
  5. Hand out one card to each student in the classroom from a set of 36. Three cards describe major South Carolina regions (Mountains, Coastal Plain and Ocean). Three cards describe one ecosystem located in each of the regions listed above (mountain stream, blackwater swamp and rocky reef, respectively). Eighteen cards describe a plant or an animal. Twelve cards describe an abiotic factor. They are grouped as shown below:
    6.      
    Mountain Coastal Plain Ocean
    Mountain Stream Blackwater Swamp Rocky Reef
    Black belly salamander Cypress Tree Phytoplankton
    Blackbanded darter Red-bellied water snake Queen angelfish
    Canadian hemlock Great Blue heron Green sea turtle
    Wood frog American alligator Cannonball jellyfish
    Cucumber tree Bluespotted sunfish Spider crab
    Bog turtle Yellow-bellied slider Black sea bass
    Air Air Air
    Sun Sun Sun
    Water Water Water
    Rock Rock Rock
         
  6. Ensure that the following cards are given to students first: the Coastal Plain, the blackwater swamp, the Mountains, the mountain stream, the Ocean and the rocky reef. Once those cards have been distributed it is best to distribute an even mix of the community members (the plants and animals) and nonliving things (sun, water, rock, air) that comprise the blackwater swamp, rocky reef and mountain stream ecosystems. All cards do not need to be used.
  7. Ask students to read their cards, talk to their classmates and organize themselves into three distinct ecosystems according to their cards.
  8. Once students have broken themselves into three distinct groups, ask students to read the contents of their card to the rest of the class, and explain why they are a part of their particular ecosystem.
  9. Ask students to raise their card in the air if they hold a South Carolina region card. Only the Mountains, Coastal Plain and Ocean cards should be raised.
  10. Ask students to raise their card in the air if they hold a South Carolina ecosystem card. Only the mountain stream, blackwater swamp and rocky reef cards should be raised.
  11. Ask students to raise their cards in the air if they hold a card that pictures a member of a community. Check to see if only students with plant or animal clue cards raise their hand.
    1. Optional: Ask students in each group to work together to determine which community members are producers and which community members are consumers.
  12. Ask students to raise their cards in the air if they hold a card that pictures a member of an ecosystem. Check to see if students with plant, animal, rock, sun, air and water cards raise their hands.
    1. Optional: Ask students in each group to work together to explain ways ecosystem members are dependant on one another.

ASSESSMENT
Use the following data sheets to assess whether students comprehended the differences between communities and ecosystems

Student Datasheet
Student Answer Key

Scoring Rubric (out of 10 points)
1 point for each thing correctly added to community and ecosystem
Total: 10 points

RESOURCES

Teacher Reference Books
Ballantine, Todd. Tideland Treasures. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, 1991.
A wonderfully simple introduction to the plants and animals of the salt marsh, sandy beach and ocean habitats of the eastern United States.

Barry, John M. Natural Vegetation of South Carolina, University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, 1980.
A look at the vegetation communities of each of the regions of South Carolina and the abiotic factors that influence them.

Kovacik, Charles F. and John J.Winberry. South Carolina: The Making Of a Landscape, University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, 1987.
Information on the geology, ecology and cultural history of the different landforms and regions of South Carolina.

Martof, Bernard S. et. al. Amphibians and Reptiles of the Carolinas and Virginia. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1980.
A content-rich field guide to the reptiles and amphibians of South and North Carolina and Virginia.

Meyer, Peter. Nature Guide to the Carolina Coast, Avian-Cetacean Press, Wilmington, NC, 1998.
An informative look at the characteristics and wildlife of the Coast and Ocean regions of South and North Carolina.

Rhodes, Fred C et. al. Freshwater Water Fishes of the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1994.
A content-rich field guide to the fresh water fishes of South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.

Ruppert, Edward E. and Richard S. Fox. Seashore Animals of the Southeast. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, 1988.
A content-rich field guide for the identification of shallow-water invertebrate animals of the Atlantic coast of the southeastern United States.

Teacher Reference Websites
Eisenhower National Clearinghouse
http://www.enc.org/
This website is sponsored by the United States Department of Education. An entire section is dedicated to lesson plans and activities for teachers. Within the lesson plan section underneath the heading of science topics, teachers can find an array of activities on adaptations.

Frank Potter's Science Gems
http://www.sciencegems.com
A plethora of science resources can be accessed at this terrific site. Under the Life Science II heading, teachers can access the "Ecology", "Biology of Plants" and the "Biology of Animals" sections. All sections contain a wide variety of information, resources, and lesson plans related to ecology, plants and animals.

Nature Scene
http://www.picketfence.com/naturescene/Congaree/landforms.html
Information on land forms, climate, and geography in the Congaree Swamp region of South Carolina.

South Carolina Department of Natural Resources
http://www.dnr.state.sc.us/
Information on the wildlife and geology of all of South Carolina.

Student Reference Books
Eyewitness Books: Ocean, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, New York, 1995.
This book uses photographs, illustrations and text to teach the reader about the plants and animals that make ocean habitats their home.

Eyewitness Books: Ecology, Steve Pollock. Dorling Kindersley, Inc. New York, 2000.
This book uses photographs, illustrations and text to teach the reader about ecology.

Look Closer: Swamp Life, Dorling Kindersley, New York, 1993.
Using photographs, illustrations and text, this book teaches the reader about the plants and animals that live in swamps.

One Small Square: Swamp, Donald Silver. Learning Triangle Press, 1997. ISBN 0070579261
Great text and great illustrations combine to provide students with an abundance of background information about the swamp ecosystem.

Student Fiction Books
Pass the Energy Please! Barbara Shaw McKinney. Dawn Publications, 1951. ISBN 1584690011
This well-illustrated book focuses on food chains and the interdependencies of plants and animals.

Curricula
Aquatic Project WILD
Aquatic Project WILD is an interdisciplinary curriculum for K-12 teachers on aquatic wildlife and ecosystems. The activities cover a broad range of environmental and conservation topics.

For information on signing up for workshops, call the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources at (803) 734-3814. For more information click on: www.dnr.state.sc.us/cec/educate/edu1.html#teacher

Project WILD
Project WILD is an interdisciplinary curriculum for K-12 teachers on a broad range of environmental and conservation topics. For information on signing up for workshops, call the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources at (803) 734-3814.

For more information click on: www.dnr.state.sc.us/cec/educate/edu1.html#teacher

Field Trip Sites
South Carolina's Ecoregions
Each of South Carolina's ecoregions contains many parks and preserved land that make characteristic communities and ecosystems accessible to school groups. Below is listed one example from each region used in this activity.

Mountains
Mountain Bridge Wilderness Area (Jones Gap and Caesars Head State Natural Areas) - The Mountain Bridge Wilderness Area covers more than 10,000 acres of exceptional mountain habitat including Jones Gap and Caesars Head state parks. Education at this site strives to foster an understanding and appreciation of the Mountain Bridge, the Southern Appalachian Mountains and the Blue Ridge Escarpment. Through expert instruction and hands-on field experiences, students can investigate the ecology, hydrology and geology of the area. (Greenville County - Caesars Head 864.836.6115; Jones Gap 864.836.3647)

Coastal Plain
Cypress Gardens is a preserved blackwater swamp habitat located between Goose Creek and Moncks Corner. Trails, boats, a butterfly garden and freshwater aquariums can all be found here. The garden is open seven days a week and offers environmental education programs for school groups. For more information call (843) 553-0515.

Ocean
Huntington Beach State Park - With its marshes, maritime forest and beach, the educational focus of Huntington Beach will foster understanding of how natural communities are interdependent on each other and dependent on us. To protect our natural heritage, we must learn that we are part of, not apart from, the natural world. Through observation and hands-on activities, students gain an understanding of the importance of the resources found on this park and enhance their appreciation of environmental issues facing their own communities. (Georgetown County - 843.237.4440)

If you are aware of other books, videos, websites, curricula, fieldtrip destinations or other materials that would make excellent resources for this activity, please e-mail them to us for inclusion in this list at: Education@scaquarium.org