Living Things and Their Habitats : Human Impact

In this unit, we will learn about some of the positive and negative ways that humans change the environment, locally and globally, with a particular focus on how this affects other living things.  We will consider how industry, housing and thoughtless behaviour can damage local habitats and also how humans can increase biodiversity by developing environments such as country parks and nature reserves. This will be related to a developing understanding of food chains and what happens if food chains are broken by habitat disruption or the removal of a species from an ecosystem.

Pilgims Class will then consider both habitats (where something lives) and ecosystems (the inter-relationships between organisms and their interaction with the habitat/environment). As an example of a local issue that they can influence, we will plan and carry out litter surveys and, through considering the effect of litter on animals, will understand that its negative impact goes beyond its appearance.  Alongside this we will also introduce some global issues by researching the impact of deforestation, ocean pollution (oil spill) and global warming on ecosystems.

When working scientifically we will plan and carry out a litter survey, using a tally chart to record data. We will group items into categories to make survey data manageable and present our findings by constructing and labelling pictograms and bar charts.