Unit 6 · Ecosystems & Our Footprint · Week 5 · Performance task

Can you design a solution to a real schoolyard or community impact — and trace the energy and matter through it?

You have spent the year asking "where did the energy and matter go?" In Weeks 1–4 of this unit, you built the full ecosystem model: energy flows, matter cycles, species are interdependent, and human actions redirect those flows at large scale. Now the question is yours to answer: can you identify a real human-impact problem and design a solution that actually restores the energy and matter flows that were disrupted?

SEP: Constructing Explanations & Designing Solutions · Obtaining, Evaluating & Communicating Information DCI: ESS3.C Human Impacts on Earth Systems · LS2.A Interdependent Relationships · LS2.B Cycle of Matter & Energy Transfer CCC: Energy & Matter · Cause & Effect · Systems & System Models

NGSS MS-ESS3-3 · MS-LS2-1 · MS-LS2-3 · MS-LS2-4 ~60 minutes (performance task) Learner code: —

Make this lesson work for you:

Start here

How we work today (our expectations)

This is YOUR thinking — bring in everything you built across this unit and this year
There is more than one good design — justify why yours works using the science
Evidence and reasoning matter more than a "right answer"
Open any support panel at any time — supports belong to you

30-second check-in self-awareness + self-management

This is the last lesson of the year. Before we start, take one slow breath. Think back to Unit 1 Week 1 — you wondered where a hand-warmer's heat came from. You followed that question through six units: matter, waves, climate, Earth's surface, cells, and now ecosystems. The same crosscutting concept — Energy and Matter — ran through all of it. Today you use everything. Name one idea from this year that feels solid right now. That is your anchor. Rate your focus 1–5 and remember: the supports are here, and progress saves automatically.

Do-Now Retrieve the whole unit

Four questions — one from each week. No looking back. Pulling ideas from memory now makes the design task easier later.

W1 spiral A food chain runs: grass → grasshopper → frog → hawk. If there are 1,000 units of energy in the grass, approximately how many units reach the hawk? Show your reasoning using the 10% rule.
W2 spiral A city paves over a wetland and builds a parking lot. Describe what happens to the carbon that was cycling through the wetland's soil and plants. Does it violate conservation of matter? Explain.
W3 spiral A pest-control company eliminates all ground beetles from a schoolyard. Ground beetles eat caterpillars and are eaten by robins. Predict and explain what happens to (a) the caterpillar population and (b) the robin population after the beetles disappear.
W4 spiral The watershed chart from Week 4 showed grassland/wetland declining from 62% to 28% over 24 years. Name one way this change disrupted energy flow and one way it disrupted matter cycling in the regional ecosystem.

The anchor phenomenon

A bare, compacted, impervious schoolyard corner (left) versus a restored habitat patch with native plants, a rain garden, and returning wildlife (right). The difference is not cosmetic — it is a change in where energy goes and how matter cycles.

Look at the two diagrams. In the left panel, the sun's light hits bare compacted soil and asphalt. Instead of driving photosynthesis, it becomes heat — it warms the pavement and reflects away. Rainwater runs off immediately into a storm drain, taking topsoil nutrients with it and bypassing the groundwater system. There are no producers, so there is no food web, no energy transfer up through consumers, and no decomposers cycling matter back through the soil. Now look at the right panel. Native plants capture the sun's energy through photosynthesis and begin the food web again. A rain garden lets water percolate into the soil, recharging groundwater and supporting decomposer communities. Carbon cycles through living tissue and soil. A bee pollinates. A bird follows the insects. The energy and matter flows are restored — not perfectly, not all at once, but directionally. This is what a designed solution looks like when it actually works: it does not just "help nature" in a vague sense. It restores specific energy and matter pathways that human action had disrupted. Your task today: identify a real human-impact problem and design a solution by tracing the science, not just the good intentions.

Notice & Wonder. Write one specific energy or matter pathway you see in the right diagram that is absent in the left — and one thing you wonder about what it would take to make that restoration work in your own community.

Tie it together One unit, one connected model

Weeks 1–4 each gave you one piece. Here they connect into a single engineering insight for restoring ecosystems.

Look at the unit arc: Week 1 — energy enters ecosystems from the sun through producers and flows up through consumers, losing about 90% as heat at each step. Any disruption to the producer layer collapses the whole pyramid. Week 2 — matter cycles endlessly through living organisms, decomposers, soil, and air. Energy does not cycle — it flows one way and leaves as heat. Disrupting decomposers or sealing soil stops matter cycling; removing that disruption allows it to resume. Week 3 — species are interdependent through energy and matter pathways; removing one species triggers trophic cascades; resilience depends on biodiversity (the number of pathways). Adding species and connections back increases resilience. Week 4 — human activities redirect energy and matter flows at large scale; habitat loss, resource extraction, and climate change all cut energy pathways or disrupt matter cycles. A designed solution must specifically address which pathways were cut and how to restore them. The engineering insight tying all four weeks together: a solution to a human-impact problem is effective when it re-establishes the energy and matter pathways that the impact disrupted — not when it simply adds green space or plants trees without tracing why that restores function. A designer who understands energy flow, matter cycling, interdependence, and the scale of human impact can engineer a restoration that actually works, and can predict where it might fail.

Worked example — applying the unit model to the schoolyard corner scenario (read before you design)

Identify the impact: A bare, compacted corner of the schoolyard was previously a grassy area with wildflowers. It was compacted by foot traffic and edged with asphalt to reduce maintenance. Impact: solar energy no longer drives photosynthesis in that corner; it heats concrete. Rainwater runs off (taking dissolved nutrients) instead of recharging groundwater and soil moisture. There are no producers → no primary consumers → no food web. The decomposer community is gone (no organic matter input to soil).

Trace the disrupted pathways: (1) Energy: sunlight → photosynthesis → producers → consumers: all blocked at the first step. (2) Matter cycling: carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles are all disrupted — no plant uptake of CO₂, no decomposers releasing nutrients to soil, no water percolation. (3) Interdependence: zero species connected here means zero food web resilience.

Design the restoration — trace each pathway: (1) Energy: plant native wildflowers and grasses that capture sunlight. These producers start the food web. (2) Matter cycling: add a small rain garden depression (10 cm deep) to allow water percolation → supports soil moisture and decomposer communities; add a thin layer of leaf mulch as organic matter input to restart decomposer activity → decomposers release nutrients → nutrients support plant growth → carbon cycles from air into plant tissue and back. (3) Interdependence: choose plants that are host plants for local caterpillar species → caterpillars attract insectivorous birds → two trophic levels reestablished from one planting decision. (4) Trade-off: the restored area will require some maintenance — foot traffic must be rerouted — but the solar energy capture increase and water infiltration benefit are measurable from the first season.

Key test of a good design: can you trace at least one energy pathway and one matter cycle that your design restores? If not, the design may look helpful but not function as an ecosystem.

Show me a unit connection table linking all four weeks to the design problem Tier 2 · organizer

Fill in this table to connect each week's science to your design problem:

W1 (energy flow): My design restores energy flow by ________. The producers I am adding will capture ________ energy and transfer it to ________ at the next trophic level.

W2 (matter cycling): My design restores matter cycling by ________. Specifically, ________ will allow decomposers to ________, which releases ________ back to the soil for plants to use.

W3 (interdependence): My design increases food web connections by ________. Adding ________ creates habitat for ________, which in turn supports ________.

W4 (human impact): The human activity that caused the original problem was ________. My design addresses this by ________, which reduces the impact because ________.

Performance task Design your ecosystem restoration

This is the year-capstone summative task. Use everything from Unit 6 Weeks 1–4 and the year-long energy and matter throughline. Complete all four steps. All response modes are equally valid.

✎️ Write your design + explanation 🎨 Draw a labeled diagram with energy and matter arrows + annotate 📣 Record yourself explaining your design step-by-step

Step 1 — Identify your problem and argue from evidence.

Choose a scenario and describe the human-impact problem you are solving:

Scenario: ☐ A bare, compacted, impervious corner of the schoolyard ☐ A paved-over schoolyard drainage area that causes runoff ☐ A heavily mowed lawn with no wildflowers or native plants ☐ My own problem in my community: _______________

The human activity that caused the problem: _______________________________________________

Evidence that it is a problem (use data or observations — what does the site look like? What is missing?): _______________________________________________

Think about: Which energy pathway was disrupted? Which matter cycle was broken? Which food web connections were lost? Your argument must connect to at least two of these.

Step 2 — Design your solution and trace the energy and matter through it.

This is the core of the task. Your design must explicitly trace how energy and matter move through it. In 4–6 sentences (or a labeled diagram), answer:

What is your specific design? (What would you add, remove, or change — and where, specifically?)
Trace the energy pathway your design restores: start with the sun and follow the energy through at least two trophic levels. Use the 10% rule from Week 1 if relevant.
Trace at least one matter cycle your design restores: follow one type of matter (carbon, water, or nutrients) through at least two steps of the cycle. Connect to Week 2's matter-cycling model.
Identify at least one food web connection your design restores or creates — connecting to the interdependence model from Week 3.

Step 3 — Address trade-offs and predict where your design might fail.

Every design has trade-offs — things it gains and things it costs or gives up. Answer two of the following:

What is one cost or limitation of your design (to people, time, money, or other ecosystem functions)? How does this limit what your design can achieve?
What is one way your design might not work as intended — and which week's science (W1–W4) predicts that failure? Explain using an energy or matter pathway.
Does your design address the cause of the problem, or just the symptoms? What would need to change at a larger scale (community, city, regional) for your design to have lasting impact?

Step 4 — Propose a test and describe how you would know it worked.

How would you test whether your design successfully restored the energy and matter flows you targeted? (What would you measure or observe? What counts as success — name something specific and measurable.)
Describe one change to your design you would try if the first test showed it was not working — and explain, using energy or matter science from this unit, why that change should help.

Guided template with sentence frames for all four steps Tier 2 · frames + template

Step 1 sentence frames:

The human-impact problem I am solving is ________. The human activity that caused it is ________. I know it is a problem because ________ (describe what is missing or what evidence shows the ecosystem is disrupted). The energy pathway disrupted is ________ because ________. The matter cycle disrupted is ________ because ________.

Step 2 sentence frames:

My design is ________.
Energy pathway: The sun's energy will now flow into ________ (producers) through photosynthesis. From there, ________ (primary consumer) will capture about ____% of that energy, and ________ (secondary consumer) will capture about ____% of what remains.
Matter cycle: ________ (carbon / water / nutrients) will cycle by: [step 1] ________ → [step 2] ________ → [step 3] ________. This connects to W2 because ________.
Food web connection restored: ________ depends on ________ for food/habitat. My design restores this connection by ________.

Step 3 sentence frames:

One trade-off of my design is ________. This limits it because ________.
One way my design might not work is ________. The W___ science that predicts this failure is ________ because ________.

Step 4 sentence frames:

I would test my design by measuring/observing ________. I would know it worked if ________. If it did not work, I would try ________ because, based on [energy flow / matter cycling / trophic cascades], ________.

Word bank: energy · photosynthesis · producer · primary consumer · secondary consumer · trophic level · 10% · food web · matter · carbon · nutrients · water · decomposer · soil · nutrient cycle · carbon cycle · water cycle · habitat · biodiversity · trophic cascade · limiting factor · restoration · trade-off · test · measure · observe · native plants · food web connection · interdependence

Concrete guided choices — a step-by-step design walkthrough Tier 3 · re-teach

Start with the simplest problem — the bare, compacted schoolyard corner. Work through each step with guided choices:

Step 1 — Identify:

The problem is: a bare, compacted patch with no plants. The human activity that caused it was: ________ (foot traffic / paving / mowing). Evidence: no plants → no food web → no energy flowing through → no matter cycling.

Step 2 — Design (guided):

I will plant ________ (native grasses / wildflowers) in the corner and add a thin layer of ________ (mulch / leaf litter) to feed soil organisms.
Energy trace: Sun → plants (photosynthesis) → ________ (caterpillar/bee) eats the plant → ________ (bird) eats the insect. Energy at each step = about 10% of the step before.
Matter trace: CO₂ from air → plant (photosynthesis) → plant dies → decomposer breaks it down → nutrients released into soil → new plant absorbs them. This is the ________ (carbon) cycle from W2.
Food web connection: Adding native plants gives ________ (caterpillars) a food source, which gives ________ (birds) prey. I restored ________ trophic levels.

Step 3 — Trade-offs (guided):

One cost is: foot traffic must be rerouted, which might frustrate people who use that path.
One way it might not work: if the soil is too compacted for roots to penetrate, the plants will die. W2 science tells us: compacted soil has poor aeration for decomposers → no nutrient cycling → plants cannot get nitrogen → they fail. Fix: aerate the soil before planting.

Step 4 — Test (guided):

I would test my design by: counting plant species and insect species after ________ weeks. Success = at least ________ plant species established and ________ insect species observed. If it failed, I would try ________ (aerating soil / watering more / adding more organic matter / planting different species) because ________.

Say each answer out loud before writing it — one or two sentences per step is a complete response.

Push my thinking — constraints, systems analysis, and the year-long scale Extension

Engineering constraints to add: Your restoration must (1) function without irrigation after the first season; (2) support at least three trophic levels; (3) be maintainable by students without specialized equipment; (4) address both energy flow and at least two matter cycles (carbon AND water); (5) cost less than $500 to implement.

Systems analysis: Your design exists within a larger system. For each of the following, describe how the larger system might help or undermine your design:

The regional climate (Unit 3): how might a drought year affect your restoration's first-year success? How would you design around that?
Adjacent human land use (W4): if the restored patch is surrounded by impervious surfaces, what does that mean for the water cycle in your design? What mitigating design feature addresses this?
Food web redundancy (W3): if your design supports only one plant species, what happens if that plant is eaten by caterpillars before establishing? How does biodiversity in your planting design increase resilience?

Year-long scale: In Unit 1, you tracked energy stored in chemical bonds in a hand-warmer. You are now tracking energy flow through an ecosystem restoration. Write a paragraph explaining how the same physics — conservation of energy, energy transfer, heat loss — applies in both cases. What is the "hand-warmer" of your ecosystem design? Where is energy stored? Where does it flow? Where is it lost as heat?

How your work will be evaluated — the 3D rubric

Read this before you write. The strongest response uses all three dimensions together: science practices, the core ecosystem and human-impact ideas, and the energy and matter throughline.

Performance Task Rubric — Unit 6 Year Capstone (MS-ESS3-3, MS-LS2-1, MS-LS2-3, MS-LS2-4)

Dimension	Emerging — getting started	Developing — on the way	Proficient — you've got it	Advanced — going beyond
SEP: Constructing Explanations & Designing Solutions	Identifies a problem and proposes a design (e.g., "plant trees") but does not connect the design to the specific energy or matter pathways disrupted; argument lacks evidence; no test proposed.	Describes a design and connects it to at least one ecosystem concept (e.g., adding producers restores energy flow); basic argument from evidence; proposes a test, though the connection between test and design goal is partial.	Clearly identifies the human-impact problem and argues from evidence; design explicitly traces at least one energy pathway and one matter cycle through the restoration; proposes a testable, specific success measure; identifies at least one trade-off or limitation; explanation connects every design choice to a science concept from W1–W4.	Articulates multiple design criteria and constraints; trades off between competing goals (e.g., human use vs. ecosystem function) using evidence; designs a fair test with a specific measurable variable; predicts failure modes and adjusts the design; connects design logic to the year-long energy and matter CCC explicitly.
DCI: ESS3.C Human Impacts · LS2.A Interdependence · LS2.B Energy Transfer & Matter Cycling	States that the human activity caused harm but does not connect to energy flow, matter cycling, or food web interdependence; may have a misconception (e.g., "plants will fix everything" without explaining the pathway).	Connects the human impact to at least one DCI concept (e.g., habitat loss removes producers); mentions energy flow or matter cycling but does not trace it specifically through the design; food web connection is implied rather than stated.	Explains how the human activity disrupted at least one energy pathway and one matter cycle (using W1 and W2 models); design explicitly restores those pathways; at least one food web connection (W3 interdependence model) is identified and restored; human-impact scale (W4) is acknowledged; vocabulary is accurate (trophic level, producer, decomposer, carbon cycle, etc.).	Integrates all four weeks' DCIs: traces energy from sun through at least two trophic levels with approximate efficiencies; traces a complete matter cycle through the design; identifies trophic cascade effects that the design either prevents or triggers; connects to large-scale human impact (climate, biodiversity) beyond the local site; discusses trade-offs at system level.
CCC: Energy & Matter (year-long throughline)	Notes that the design involves living things or "nature" but does not connect to energy or matter explicitly; no mention of the year-long throughline.	States that the design restores energy or matter flow but does not trace the specific pathway; may use "energy" or "matter" as labels without explaining what moves or how.	Explicitly traces at least one energy pathway (sun → producer → consumer, with heat loss noted) and at least one matter cycle (naming the atoms or molecules and their path) through the design; connects this to at least one earlier unit (e.g., "This is the same 10% rule from W1" or "This is the carbon cycle from W2 restarting"); design is justified by how it restores these flows, not just by surface features (green space, aesthetics).	Demonstrates that the same energy and matter principles apply across scales — from the hand-warmer (Unit 1) to the ecosystem restoration; explains that the design does not create energy or matter but redirects existing flows back to biological pathways; discusses trade-offs at the system level in terms of where energy and matter go when they do not go through the restoration; year-long throughline is named explicitly as the organizing principle of the design reasoning.

Check yourself Unit synthesis — did it connect?

Success criteria — I can:

identify a human-impact problem and argue from evidence that it disrupted specific energy and matter flows;
design a solution that explicitly restores at least one energy pathway and one matter cycle;
connect the design to food web interdependence and the scale of human impact;
propose a testable success measure and identify at least one trade-off;
name the year-long Energy and Matter throughline and explain how it ran through all six units.

A classmate designs a schoolyard restoration by saying: "I will plant some trees and that will fix the ecosystem, because trees make oxygen and that helps everything." Which response best identifies what is missing from this reasoning?

Re-teach: a good solution traces energy and matter — it doesn't just "add nature" Tier 3

The core science error to avoid: thinking a restoration "works" just because it adds living things. Living things only restore ecosystem function if they restart the specific energy and matter flows that were disrupted. "Trees make oxygen" describes a chemical process but does not explain why that process restores the ecosystem. Ask instead: what energy pathway was cut? What matter cycle was broken? What food web connection was lost?

The conservation error to avoid: thinking a design "makes" new energy or matter. It does not. Energy is conserved (Unit 1: it cannot be created). Matter is conserved (Unit 1: atoms cannot be created or destroyed). A restoration redirects existing energy — solar energy that was heating concrete now flows through photosynthesis. A restoration reconnects matter cycles — carbon that was not cycling through living tissue now can again because decomposers are active in the soil. The design does not make anything new; it opens pathways that were blocked.

Test your design reasoning with these two questions:

Can I point to the exact step in my design where solar energy enters a biological pathway? (If not, trace backward from the producers.)
Can I follow one type of matter — carbon, water, or nitrogen — through at least two steps of a cycle that my design enables? (If not, add a decomposer or water infiltration feature and trace it.)

Re-read option B. Try to say in your own words what makes it a stronger argument than the classmate's before moving on.

Reflect, then show what you know

Metacognitive reflection metacognition + SEL

Answer at least one:

What is one idea from this unit that changed how you think about a place near where you live?
Which of the four weeks was hardest to connect to today's design — and what did you do to bridge it?
If you had to explain to a younger student why "planting trees" is not always enough to restore an ecosystem, what would you say?

Self-assessment against the rubric responsible decision-making

Look back at the 3D rubric. For each row (SEP, DCI, CCC), write the level that best describes your performance task response — Emerging, Developing, Proficient, or Advanced. Then write one specific thing you would add or change to move up one level.

SEP: I am at _______________. One thing I would add or change: _______________.

DCI: I am at _______________. One thing I would add or change: _______________.

CCC: I am at _______________. One thing I would add or change: _______________.

Year-long throughline reflection synthesis

In Unit 1, you asked: "Where does the warmth come from?" The answer was that energy stored in chemical bonds was transferred as heat. You have been asking that same question — "where did the energy and matter go?" — every unit since. Write 3–5 sentences completing this reflection:

In Unit 1, I learned that energy ________. In Units 2 and 3, I saw that ________. In Units 4 and 5, the idea of energy and matter showed up as ________. In Unit 6, the same idea explained ________. Across the whole year, the one principle that connected every unit was ________.

Exit ticket — answer on paper or in your notebook.

New In one or two sentences, explain why a good ecosystem restoration must trace energy and matter pathways — not just add green space. Use the word "redirect" in your answer.
New Name one specific food web connection your design restores and explain why that connection matters for energy flow through the ecosystem.
Spiral — W2 Your restoration design adds leaf mulch to the bare soil. Trace the carbon in those leaves through the carbon cycle: where does the carbon go over the next year, and how does that help your restored plants?
Spiral — W4 Your schoolyard restoration is small — maybe 20 square metres. The watershed chart from Week 4 showed a 34-percentage-point loss of grassland. What would need to change at the community or city scale for your restoration design to have a meaningful impact on that larger-scale problem? Use the idea of scale from the CCC.
Transfer — year throughline A student says: "We can't run out of matter because it's conserved — so habitat loss is not really a permanent problem; the atoms are still there." Using everything from this year, explain what is wrong with this argument. Distinguish between matter being conserved (always true) and matter cycling through biological pathways (disrupted by habitat loss). Then explain why that distinction matters for designing a restoration.

Educator panel — facilitation, accommodations, rubric guidance, answer key, research rationale

At a glance

Primary standard: NGSS MS-ESS3-3 — Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment. Integrated standards: MS-LS2-1 (factors affecting organism growth — habitat as a limiting factor for the designed community); MS-LS2-3 (develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy — used to evaluate whether the design functions as an ecosystem); MS-LS2-4 (construct an argument supported by evidence for how biodiversity impacts Earth as a system — the food web connection step of the design). 3D lens: SEP Constructing Explanations & Designing Solutions + Obtaining, Evaluating & Communicating Information · DCI ESS3.C Human Impacts + LS2.A Interdependent Relationships + LS2.B Cycle of Matter and Energy Transfer · CCC Energy & Matter (year-long CCC) + Cause & Effect + Systems & System Models.

Year capstone note: This is the last lesson of the grade-6 year. The year-long CCC (Energy and Matter) is explicitly named and revisited in the rubric, the reflection, and the exit ticket. All facilitation prompts and rubric descriptors are designed to surface that throughline. The exit ticket item 5 (transfer) is the year's final synthesis question and intentionally requires students to hold two ideas at once: conservation of matter (always true) and matter cycling through biological pathways (disrupted by habitat loss).

Materials needed: None required beyond paper and pencil. Optional: students may photograph or sketch the specific site they choose for their design problem — a phone camera adds authenticity and place-based grounding. The SVG diagrams are fully inline.

Estimated time: 60 minutes. Do-Now retrieval: 8 min. Phenomenon + synthesis: 10 min. Introduce task + rubric: 4 min. Performance task (Steps 1–4): 20–25 min. Self-check + re-teach: 4 min. Brain break, reflection, exit: 10 min. The year-throughline reflection and rubric self-assessment can be assigned as take-home if the period runs short.

Facilitation arc (Rosenshine + engineering design loop + year-end synthesis)

Do-Now retrieval (8 min) — four interleaved items, one per prior week. Have students work individually, then do a 90-second pair share. The four items are calibrated: item 1 (energy calculation) connects directly to the design Step 2 energy trace; item 2 (wetland matter cycling) connects to the matter cycle trace; item 3 (cascade from beetle removal) activates the food web connection thinking; item 4 (W4 chart) anchors the problem identification in Step 1.
Phenomenon + notice/wonder (5 min) — display the SVG; ask: "What is different between the two diagrams in terms of energy flow — not what you see, but what is happening to the sun's energy?" Then: "What is different in terms of matter cycling?" This forces students to read the diagram through the CCC lens before seeing the synthesis text.
Synthesis build + worked example (5 min) — read the "Tie it together" passage as a class. Walk through the worked example. Ask: "The worked example gives you the schoolyard corner scenario — you may use this one, or choose your own. Either way, your design must trace energy and matter. What is the non-negotiable in this task?" (Expected: the energy-matter trace.)
Introduce performance task + rubric (4 min) — read the rubric aloud together before students begin. Ask: "What is the difference between Developing and Proficient on the CCC row?" (Expected: Proficient requires tracing the specific pathway, not just saying "energy flows.") Ask: "What would Advanced look like for the DCI row?" This is formative pre-previewing (Black & Wiliam, 1998).
Performance task (20–25 min) — students work independently or in pairs. Circulate; prompt: "Can you point to the exact step in your design where solar energy enters a biological pathway? Can you trace one atom of carbon through your design?" Do not evaluate during this time — ask questions that surface reasoning, not questions that give answers.
Self-check + re-teach (4 min) — quick poll (A/B/C); route any A/C responders to #reteach-conservation. Briefly explain option B before moving to reflection.
Brain break + year-throughline reflection + rubric self-assessment + exit ticket (10 min) — the brain break is intentionally year-closing (sun → producer → consumer → decomposer traced on the body). The year-throughline reflection should be given at least 3 minutes; it is the year's final metacognitive synthesis. The exit ticket can be completed for homework if needed.

IEP / 504 accommodation cards

Common accommodations mapped to this lesson

Accommodation	How it's already built in / what to do
Text read aloud	Every passage has a Listen button (TTS via Web Speech API); the simplified toggle shortens all passages.
Reduced reading load	"Reading: Simplified" swaps in plain-language text throughout; the simplified synthesis passage reduces the unit-arc summary to four bullet-point sentences.
Chunking / extended time	Performance task is broken into four clearly numbered steps; progress saves automatically; steps can be completed across multiple sittings.
Sentence frames / word bank	Tier-2 panel provides full sentence frames for all four steps and a 28-term word bank; Tier-2 also provides a unit connection table to organize thinking before writing.
Concrete analogy / reduced load	Tier-3 walks students through the simplest scenario (bare schoolyard corner) with guided-choice frames for every step; verbal "say it aloud" prompts before writing lower the writing barrier.
Alternative response mode	Write, draw a labeled diagram with energy and matter arrows, or record a verbal explanation — all three are explicitly stated as equally valid.
Behavior / focus (504, ADHD)	Named expectations (PBIS), 30-second check-in, four short numbered steps, embodied brain break tracing the full cycle on the body.
Multilingual / EL	Simplified text toggle, SVG diagram with all labels as text (not color-only), 28-term word bank, home-language reflection allowed (year-throughline reflection is ideal for home-language expression), place-based design connects to student's own community environment.
IEP goal: written expression	Accept diagram + minimal annotation as a complete response to Steps 2–3; verbal recording to the teacher is also valid. The Tier-3 guided-choice frames provide a scaffold that meets any IEP floor for written expression at the Developing level.
IEP goal: science reasoning	The Emerging and Developing rubric descriptors define an accessible floor: any student who names a problem and connects it to one ecosystem concept is Developing. The Tier-3 panel walks students step by step through Proficient reasoning with guided choices. Any response at or above Developing demonstrates meaningful three-dimensional reasoning.

Rubric scoring guidance + exemplar response sketch

What a Proficient response looks like (bare schoolyard corner):

SEP: "The human-impact problem is a compacted bare corner that was previously grassland. The evidence is: no plants growing, impervious asphalt edge, water running off rather than soaking in. My design is to plant native wildflowers (3 species) and add a 10 cm deep rain-garden depression, mulched with leaf litter. I would know it worked if five or more plant species were established by month three and at least two insect species were observed. A trade-off is that foot traffic must be rerouted, which may require a small fence and a sign — cost and social friction are real limits."
DCI: "The bare corner has no producers, so solar energy cannot enter the food web — it just heats the asphalt. My design restores photosynthesis: sun → native wildflowers → caterpillars (≈10% of plant energy) → birds (≈10% of caterpillar energy). The mulch restores matter cycling: leaf carbon → decomposers in soil → CO₂ released back to air → taken up again by new plants (the W2 carbon cycle restarting). Adding native plants restores the food web link from plants to pollinators (bees) and from plants to herbivorous insects — two new trophic connections. The rain garden addresses the W4 water-cycle disruption: water percolates rather than running off to the storm drain, recharging soil moisture and supporting the decomposer community."
CCC: "My design does not create energy or matter. It redirects solar energy that was heating asphalt back into photosynthesis — the same principle from Unit 1 (energy transfers; it doesn't appear from nowhere). It reconnects the carbon cycle that was broken when the soil was compacted — same conservation-of-matter principle: the carbon atoms were always there, just locked in asphalt and unable to cycle through living tissue. The 10% rule (W1) tells me why I need native plants as producers first: without them, no energy reaches any consumer no matter how many other design features I add."

Common errors to address:

"Planting trees fixes the ecosystem" without tracing a pathway — redirect to: "Which specific energy pathway does that restore? Which matter cycle? Trace it step by step."
Treating the design as if it creates energy or matter — redirect to Unit 1: "Energy is conserved. Your design doesn't make energy; it changes where existing energy goes. Where does it go before your design, and where does it go after?"
Focusing only on biodiversity (number of species) without connecting to energy flow — redirect to W1: "Adding species is great. But why does each species matter for energy and matter flow? Which trophic level does each new species occupy, and what pathway does it create or restore?"
Missing the trade-off — prompt: "What does your design cost or give up? Who might object to it? What would happen to energy and matter flow if your design failed?"
Year-throughline vague or absent — prompt: "Where did you see the Energy and Matter CCC in Unit 1? Unit 3? Can you name the specific principle that connects your design to what you did at the start of the year?"

Exit ticket answer key

A good restoration must trace energy and matter pathways because "adding green space" may not redirect the specific flow that was disrupted. Simply planting trees in compacted soil with no decomposer community will not restart the carbon cycle. A design must redirect solar energy back into photosynthesis (instead of heating asphalt) and reconnect matter cycles (carbon through decomposers and plants, water through soil instead of runoff) — those are the specific functions that make an ecosystem work, not the presence of green plants alone.
(Answers will vary; sample.) My design adds native wildflowers. This restores the connection: wildflowers (producers) → native bees (primary consumer). This matters for energy flow because bees capture approximately 10% of the energy stored in the plant's sugars when they consume nectar and pollen. Without producers, there is no energy entering the food web for bees or any consumer above them.
The carbon in the leaf mulch cycles as follows: (1) Decomposers (fungi, bacteria in the restored soil) break down the leaf organic matter using cellular respiration, releasing CO₂ into the soil air and into the atmosphere. (2) Some of the carbon is incorporated into soil organic matter (humus), improving soil structure and water retention. (3) Plant roots absorb dissolved carbon compounds; plants also absorb CO₂ through photosynthesis from the air released by the decomposers. (4) The carbon is built into new plant tissue (stem, leaf, root), completing the cycle. This helps the plants because decomposition releases nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients bound in the leaf litter — nutrients the new plants need to establish successfully (the W2 matter-cycling model: matter moves from dead organisms → decomposers → soil nutrients → new plant uptake).
A 20 square-metre restoration is meaningful at the school scale but negligible at the watershed scale. To address the 34-percentage-point loss shown in the W4 chart, the same design logic must be applied at community and city scale: policies that require new developments to include permeable surfaces, native plant buffers, or constructed wetlands; municipal programs that restore degraded land; regional land-use planning that prioritizes habitat connectivity (corridors between patches allow species to move and food webs to connect across fragmented areas). The CCC of Scale tells us: what works at 20 m² would have measurable impact at 2,000 m²; at 20,000 m², it starts to influence the regional food web and water cycle. The design principle is the same at every scale — the question is the number of decision-makers and policies needed to apply it.
The student's argument confuses conservation of matter (the atoms are still there) with matter cycling through biological pathways (the atoms are accessible to living systems). Both ideas are true, but they are not the same thing. Conservation of matter is a universal law: a carbon atom sealed under asphalt is not destroyed — it is still there. But if it cannot cycle through soil decomposers, be taken up by plant roots, move through a food web, and return to the air as CO₂ to be captured again by photosynthesis, then for all practical ecological purposes it is not available. Habitat loss permanently disrupts the cycling pathways — the atoms are conserved, but the biological machinery that moves them is gone. A restoration matters not because it "creates" matter (it doesn't) but because it rebuilds the pathways — decomposer communities, soil structure, plant root networks, food web connections — that allow existing atoms to cycle through living systems again. This distinction is the final synthesis of the year's energy and matter throughline: conservation of energy and matter (always true) is different from energy flow and matter cycling through biological systems (disrupted by habitat loss, restored by good design).

Why it's designed this way — research rationale

Why a performance task, not a recall test? MS-ESS3-3 asks students to "apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment." A recall test cannot assess this — it requires a new scenario, a design act, and an argument that integrates practices, core ideas, and crosscutting concepts simultaneously (NRC, 2012). The schoolyard restoration is chosen because it is (a) accessible — students can observe or imagine a real site near them; (b) genuinely three-dimensional — the design cannot be justified without integrating energy flow (W1), matter cycling (W2), interdependence (W3), and human impact (W4); (c) connected to the anchor phenomenon of the whole unit (the schoolyard patch from W1), completing the unit storyline; (d) place-based — students are restoring their own environment, which is the highest-motivation design context for CRP (Gay, 2018; Hammond, 2015).

Year-long CCC design: The Energy and Matter crosscutting concept is the explicit organizing principle of this entire curriculum. This lesson is designed so that students who have followed the year can name the CCC and trace it through their own design — not as a slogan ("energy and matter!") but as a reasoning tool ("my design redirects solar energy from heating concrete into photosynthesis, which is the same energy-transfer principle from Unit 1"). Research on transfer (Bransford et al., 2000) shows that students develop transferable understanding when they see the same organizing principle applied across multiple contexts at different scales. This lesson provides that final application.

Conservation misconception: The exit ticket item 5 and the #reteach-conservation panel directly address one of the most persistent misconceptions about environmental problems: the belief that because matter is conserved, habitat loss is not a permanent problem. This conflation of conservation of matter (thermodynamic law) with matter cycling (biological pathway) is documented in the research literature (Driver et al., 1994) and is precisely what the year-long matter-cycling model (W2) is designed to distinguish. The capstone lesson is the correct place to surface and directly address this misconception, because students now have all the tools to correct it themselves.

Strengths-first rubric (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Wiliam, 2011): The Emerging descriptor describes "getting started," not "failing." Every level names what to do next. The rubric is read aloud before the task — not after — so students use it as a pre-task success checklist. The self-assessment requires students to name their level and one specific revision, which is among the highest-impact formative practices (Wiliam, 2011, p. 127). The CCC row of the rubric explicitly names the year-long throughline at the Advanced level, giving every student a visible, aspirational target that connects the year's learning.

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