Ecosystems and the Circle of Life

This lesson was developed to teach students about ecosystems as a whole.  The idea of each group working on a separate type of ecosystem is used so that when the reports are given in the form of the powerpoint presentation and the games played by the class, the students will learn not only about the one system they worked on, but about several other types of ecosystems. 

This project is excellent to cover a lot of different ecosystems in a classroom setting in a short amount of time.  The students typically pay more attention to their classmates during their presentations because they expect the same when they give their presentation.  The students really like having a day to play the games that they created.  And when the directions for creating the game are given properly, then the students learn a lot during the game time as well.