Class meets Tuesdays from 9:00am – 11:15 am at Oak Canyon Nature Center 6700 East Walnut Canyon Road, Anaheim
Session 1: September 3 – October 15
Session 2: October 22 – December 3
For grades 7 – 12
DESCRIPTION
Discover the ecological importance of oak trees in the California ecosystem. This keystone species harbors more life forms than any other North American tree from fungi, to insects, to birds, to mammals. Oaks are some of the oldest trees in the world routinely hitting 1,000 years old! Join us as we examine the preeminence of the oak tree as fundamental to a healthy wildlife community, oak trees as a wildlife food source, how to age a tree without cutting it, the oak community and how this ecosystem has changed over time, oak galls and their many uses, wildfire and how oaks benefit, how oaks germinate and how to plant them, and of course native American uses and dependence on the acorn. We will be spending one hour of lecture and one and a half hours of outdoor lab research each week. Grading and final research project are available upon request.
Click here for session one syllabus
Click here for session two syllabus
Click here for S Bar S Waivers
NEXT GENERATION SCIENCE STANDARDS
Structure and Function
HS-LS1-2 Develop and use a model to illustrate the heirarchical organization of interacting systems that provide specific functions within multicellular organisms.
HS-LS1-3 Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence that feedback mechanisms maintain homeostasis.
Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems
HS-LS1-5 Use a model to illustrate how photosyntheses transforms light energy into stored chemical energy.
HS-LS2-1 Use mathematical and/or computational representations to support explanations of factors that affect carrying capacity of ecosystems at different scales.
HS-LS2-2 Use mathematical representations to support and revise explanations based on evidence about factors affecting biodiversity and populations in ecosystems of differet scales.
HS-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 condition may results in a new ecosystem.
HS-LS2-7 Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.
Natural Selection and Evolution
HS-LS4-4 Construct an explanation based on evidence for how natural selection leads to adaptation of populations.
HS-LS4-5 Evaluate the evidence supporting claims that changes in environmental conditions may result in : (1) increases in the number of individuals of some species, (2) the emergence of new species over time, and (3) the extinction of other species.