Students will design a Biosphere 3 model that shows how producers, consumers, decomposers, and Earth systems interact to sustain a balanced food supply over time. Teams will use feedback from peers, a compost specialist, and a cafeteria recycling coordinator to revise organism choices, food-web arrows, and nutrient cycles. They will evaluate their design through before-and-after comparisons and a claim-evidence-reasoning defense explaining whether the ecosystem will work and how it could improve. At Ecosystem Pitch Night, students will present to families and another class, then reflect on new learning and their collaboration.

Students will model how producers, consumers, and decomposers transfer energy and cycle nutrients through a balanced food web. Students will explain how the biosphere interacts with water, soil, and air and predict how organism choices, population changes, and group behaviors affect ecosystem resilience. Students will evaluate and revise a Biosphere 3 design using peer and community-partner feedback, accurately labeled arrows, and before-and-after comparisons. Students will collaborate to present and defend a claim about whether their ecosystem can provide a stable food system, using scientific evidence and reasoning.

Teams will create a food menu, classify possible organisms as producers, consumers, or decomposers, and build an initial food web showing energy and nutrient flow. They will develop and revise a labeled Biosphere 3 model with captions and arrows showing interactions among organisms, water, soil, and air, using peer feedback and insights from community compost and cafeteria recycling partners. Each team will preserve before-and-after versions to document how revisions better support a balanced food system. For Ecosystem Pitch Night, teams will deliver a claim-and-defense presentation using evidence and reasoning to explain whether their final ecosystem will work and how it could improve.

Watch the provided Biosphere 2 video, then introduce the challenge: design a dome ecosystem that can provide food for two years. Students create a typical-day menu, sort its ingredients by plant or animal source, and identify what each organism needs to survive. Teams choose up to 20 organisms from the provided inventory, including producers, consumers, and decomposers, then build an initial labeled food web showing energy, nutrient, and Earth-system interactions. Each team shares a first claim about whether its system will remain balanced, identifies one uncertainty, and saves this model for the final before-and-after comparison.

Host an Ecosystem Pitch Night for another class, families, the community compost specialist, and the cafeteria recycling coordinator. Each group displays its labeled Biosphere 3 model and before-and-after comparison, then shares a brief claim-and-defense explaining whether the ecosystem will work, how energy and nutrients move, and what improvements are still needed. Assign each student a speaking or demonstration role, invite guests to leave one question or suggestion, and close with a gallery walk reflection about one new ecosystem idea and one way the group collaborated effectively.