✂️ PARENT ANSWER KEY — Detach before giving worksheet to students
Parent note: Student wording may vary if the science reasoning is correct.
Multiple-Choice Answer Key
- Students will describe an ecosystem as living and nonliving parts interacting together.
- Students will explain how producers capture energy from the Sun and support the rest of the ecosystem.
- Students will compare a food chain and a food web and explain why a web shows more realistic ecosystem relationships.
- Students will explain how decomposers break down dead matter and return materials to the environment.
- Students will predict how a change in one population can affect other parts of a food web.
- Students will build a model showing how matter moves among producers, consumers, decomposers, and the environment.
- Using evidence from observations, tests, or models to support explanations
- To make system relationships easier to see and explain
Short Response — What Success Looks Like
- Student identifies a real relationship from the unit.
- Student explains at least one likely ecosystem effect.
- Student uses energy flow or dependency language correctly.
Short Response — Sample Acceptable Answer
“If the rabbit population dropped, predators like foxes would have less food, and some plants might grow more because fewer rabbits would eat them. That shows one population change can affect many others in the food web.”
