Background

The Chesapeake Bay is one of the country's most valuable natural treasures. It supplies millions of pounds of seafood, functions as a major center for shipping and commerce, provides natural habitats for wildlife, and offers a variety of recreational opportunities for residents and visitors. The future of the Bay, however, is in serious trouble. Aproximately 16 million people live, work, and play in the surrounding area. Each person directly affects the Bay by adding waste, consuming resources, and changing the character of the land, water, and air that surround it.

Perhaps the Chesapeake's most important contribution is providing habitats for living resources. The Bay and its surrounding watershed provide homes for a multitude of plants and animals. All living things within the Bay's ecosystem are interdependent. A change in one population affects all other organisms within the system. Healthy habitats are critical to the survival of the living resources of the Chesapeake Bay.

Task and Product

You are a genetic biologist whose job is to develop a new organism that will help improve the quality of the Chesapeake Bay. You will introduce your findings to the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, a regional nonprofit organization whose mission is to protect and to restore the Bay and its rivers. You will then need to convince the Alliance to accept and to introduce your new organism into the Bay's ecosystem.

You will be assigned one of the Bay's six habitats:

Research your habitat, gathering information about its plant and animal life, the interdependence of these organisms, the habitat's importance to the natural processes of the Chesapeake Bay, and problems the habitat has.

Based on your research, design a new organism--plant or animal--to be introduced into your habitat. This organism needs to not only survive and thrive, but it also should make a positive contribution to the quality of that habitat and to the Chesapeake Bay in general, and it should aid in improving a problem that currently exists within the habitat. You may create your organism by blending parts of other organisms that already exist, or you may develop a totally new organism. The information about your organism will be presented using one of these formats:

Your product should include :

Then present your new organism with your rationale to the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay (your class). The Alliance will vote on which organisms offer the most promise to improve the overall health of the Bay.

Assessments

Your grade for this project will be based on one or more of the following components. Scoring tools are included for each component.

Question

Essential Question: How does the interdependence of organisms in the Cheapeake Bay affect the natural processes of the Bay?

Subsidiary questions--In conducting your research, consider questions such as these about your habitat and the interdependence of its organisms.

Gather and Sort

Gather information from a variety of sources.

Sort your research by taking notes with this graphic organizer . Be sure to avoid plagiarism and remember to cite your references. Check the MLA guidelines and examples for citing resources.

Organize

Analyze your research notes to determine if you have adequate information to prepare your presentation for the Alliance of the Chesapeake Bay (your class).

• Have you gathered sufficient details about your habitat and the interdependence of its organisms?
• Does your new organism meet the specified criteria?
• Are you ready to create your final product?

Synthesize your findings by creating a first draft of your product. Use this organizer to help create your first draft.

• What new insights have emerged about your topic?
• Which facts are the most compelling and would have the greatest impact on your audience?
• Which facts are unnecessary and/or repetitive and therefore should be left out?

Evaluate your finished product. Use the appropriate product scoring tool as a checklist to make sure that your product is of good quality and that you are ready to present to the Alliance.

Conclusion

Presentation

Members of the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay (class members) will participate in a gallery walk in order to view each student's presentation. Everyone will examine at least 10 products and complete the Gallery Walk Chart organizer.

Reflection

After all of the presentations have been viewed and the Gallery Walk Notes organizer completed, respond to the following writing promp on the back of the organizer:

Based on the information about the new organisms presented by the students in your class, which new organism would have the most positive effect on the natural processes of the Chesapeake Bay? Write a paragraph explaining why this organism is the best choice to introduce into the Bay.

Your reflection will be evaluted using a Constructed Response scoring tool: html | MS Word