2020 EN-LS2-6

Page history last edited by Heather Johnston 5 years ago

The Oklahoma Academic Standards for Science (OAS-S) are three-dimensional performance expectations representing the things students should know, understand, and be able to do to be proficient in science and engineering. Performance expectations are considered standards and include a science and engineering practice (indicated in blue and represent everyday skills of scientists and engineers), disciplinary core ideas (represented in orange and represent science ideas used by scientists and engineers), and a crosscutting concept (indicated in green and represent ways of thinking like scientists and engineers).

Each dimension in the OAS-S grows in complexity and sophistication across the grades. To learn more about the prior knowledge and skills students have developed (or future knowledge/skills) associated with that specific dimension, each section in the standard below is hyperlinked to that specific vertical learning progression page.

Environmental Science (EN) Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
EN.LS2.6 Evaluate the claims, evidence, and reasoning that the complex interactions in ecosystems maintain relatively consistent numbers and types of organisms in stable conditions, but changing conditions may result in a new ecosystem.
Clarification Statement: Examples of changes in ecosystem conditions could include modest biological or physical changes, such as moderate hunting or a seasonal flood; and extreme changes, such as volcanic eruption or sea level rise.
Assessment Boundary: The assessment should provide evidence of students’ abilities to derive trends from graphical representations of population trends. Assessments should focus on describing drivers of ecosystem stability and change, not on the organismal mechanisms of responses and interactions.
Science and Engineering Practices	Disciplinary Core Ideas	Crosscutting Concepts
Engaging in Argument from Evidence Evaluate the claims, evidence, and/or reasoning behind currently accepted explanations or solutions to determine the merit of arguments.	Ecosystem Dynamics, Functioning, and Resilience A complex set of interactions within an ecosystem can keep its number and types of organisms relatively constant over long periods of time under stable conditions. If a modest biological or physical disturbance to an ecosystem occurs, it may return to its more or less original status (i.e., the ecosystem is resilient) as opposed to becoming a very different ecosystem. Extreme fluctuations in conditions or the size of any populations, however, can challenge the functions of ecosystems in terms of resources and habitat availability.	Stability and Change Much of science deals with constructing explanations of how things change and how they remain stable.
Connections to other Performance Expectations in Environmental Science
Interdependent Relationships and Dynamics of Ecosystems