Systems Literacy
Teaching About Systems

Bringing Systems into the Classroom: Grades 3-5

Video: An Urchin Matter

Keyboard Shortcut Action
Space Pause/Play video playback
Enter Pause/Play video playback
m Mute/Unmute video volume
Up and Down arrows Increase and decrease volume by 10%
Right and Left arrows Seek forward or backward by 5 seconds
0-9 Fast seek to x% of the video.
f Enter or exit fullscreen. (Note: To exit fullscreen in flash press the Esc key.
c Press c to toggle captions on or off

Continuing to the next grade band:

In grades 3-5, students understand that a system is a group of related parts that make up a whole and can carry out functions its individual parts cannot. They can also describe a system in terms of its components and their interactions.

—Next Generation Science Standards, Crosscutting Concept 4

Lesson idea: Show An Urchin Matter (Too Much Kelp!), then ask students to create a connection circle that indicates the parts of the kelp forest ecosystem. Have them describe the ecosystem and what it's capable of doing that the kelp plants or the sea otters on their own might not be able to do. On the connection circle, they should indicate the parts and diagram and then describe the interactions of the parts.