Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Activity: 8 Hands-On Stations for Teaching How Floods, Droughts, and Invasive Species Change Ecosystems (TEKS 5.12B)

Chris Kesler · 8 min read

Show a 5th grader a picture of clear-cut tree stumps next to a pond at sunset. Ask, "What happened here?" They'll say someone cut down the trees. Ask, "What happens next?" That's where the silence falls. The deer? The squirrels? The birds that nested in the trees? The fish in the pond? None of those animals show up in the picture, and 5th graders don't naturally project the consequence of a single change onto a whole ecosystem. The trees are gone. Done. Moving on.

That's TEKS 5.12B. It asks 5th graders to predict and describe how changes in an ecosystem (a flood, a drought, a fire, an invasive species) can affect the organisms living there. Predict is the key word. Kids have to take a starting condition, apply a change, and forecast what happens to populations of plants and animals. That's a leap from just describing what's there (which they did in 5.12A) to forecasting what happens next.

The Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Station Lab for TEKS 5.12B turns that prediction into something they can practice. Kids analyze three real photos (a herd of sheep on a mountain road, a clear-cut forest by a lake, an elk wading across a river), study U.S. deforestation maps from 1620 to 1926, look at a U.S. drought monitor map, trace the spread of invasive bighead carp in the Mississippi River basin, and sort six cause-effect pairs covering shopping-center development, water diversion, air pollution, overfishing, invasive species, and overgrazing. By the end, they can name a change AND tell you what it does.

⏱ 1–2 class periods 📓 5th Grade Science 🧪 TEKS 5.12B 🎯 Built-in differentiation 💻 Print or Digital

8 hands-on stations for teaching predicting changes in ecosystems

A station lab is a student-led activity where small groups rotate through 8 stations (plus a 9th challenge station for early finishers) at their own pace during one to two class periods. You become a facilitator instead of a lecturer. You walk around, spot-check, and break misconceptions while kids work through the rotation.

The Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Station Lab has four input stations (where students take in new information on what causes ecosystem changes) and four output stations (where they predict and explain the effects). Here's what's at each one.

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4 input stations: how students learn to predict changes in ecosystems

🎬 Watch It! —

A short YouTube video reviews how matter cycles through an ecosystem so kids have the energy-flow frame before they predict disruptions. Three questions on the answer sheet check whether students caught the big ideas: what does a plant do with the carbon dioxide it gets from the air, how do animals get their energy, and name three parts belonging to a pond ecosystem. These get the foundation locked in before kids try to predict what happens when one piece changes.

📖 Read It! —

A one-page passage called "Predicting Changes in Ecosystems" walks 5th graders through the key vocabulary in context. Ecosystem (a community of living and nonliving things). Matter (anything that takes up space, including trees, deer, rocks, dirt, bugs, and water). Competition (a coyote and fox both chasing the same rabbit, or cacti competing with bushes for water). Invasive species (plants or animals that move in and take over, like an invasive ant species pushing out the native ants). Biodiversity (variety of life; high biodiversity helps an ecosystem handle changes because there are backup options if one species fails). The clownfish-and-sea-anemone example anchors the helpful-relationship idea. Three multiple-choice questions follow, plus the five vocabulary words: ecosystem, matter, competition, invasive species, biodiversity. Comes in two reading levels (Dependent and Modified) plus a Spanish version.

🔬 Explore It! —

Three real photos to analyze with a group. Photo A: a herd of sheep crossing a mountain road, a red car waiting behind a fence. Photo B: clear-cut tree stumps surrounding a small lake at sunset, telephone wires above. Photo C: a large bull elk wading across a river with dead logs and grass behind him. Kids look at the road photo and predict how a road impacts an ecosystem. They look at the logging photo and predict how cutting trees impacts the area, plus brainstorm ways humans could build roads or harvest wood with less impact. They look at the elk photo and predict what would happen if the elk had no predators (a population boom, overgrazing, the same chain that played out at Yellowstone before the wolves came back). This station is the heart of the prediction skill because the photos are real and the answers aren't multiple choice.

💻 Research It! —

Eight reference cards on three big change-types. Deforestation: a passage explaining how cutting down forests changes ecosystems, plus a striking pair of maps showing the dramatic loss of virgin U.S. forest cover from 1620 to 1926. Drought: a passage on how long periods without precipitation hurt producers, consumers, and decomposers, paired with a real U.S. Drought Monitor map from November 2024 showing dry conditions across the western states. Invasive species: a passage on how invasive bighead carp displace native species, plus an actual map of bighead and silver carp spread in the Upper Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee River basins. Three questions ask how each change (deforestation, drought, invasive species) would alter the flow of energy in the food web.

📷 Featured station deep-dive — add screenshot of the Explore It! task card

4 output stations: how students show what they learned

📋 Organize It! —

A cause-and-effect card sort with six cause-effect pairs to match. Cause: human development of land for a new shopping center, paired with Effect: reduction in habitat leading to loss of biodiversity. Cause: changes to water sources for daily human use, paired with Effect: reduced available water hindering organism survival. Cause: air pollution from fossil fuels, paired with Effect: organisms die off or relocate. Cause: unregulated hunting and fishing, paired with Effect: overfishing reduces species and disrupts food chains. Cause: introduction of nonnative species, paired with Effect: they become invasive without natural predators. Cause: overgrazing by cattle, paired with Effect: vegetation removal causes erosion and ecosystem damage. The 1-to-1 matching forces kids to slow down and identify the mechanism that links cause to effect.

🎨 Illustrate It! —

Students draw a quick sketch of an ecosystem going through one of two specific issues: human development OR lack of predators. Local plants and animals must be included. The choice matters. The human-development drawing tends to show a forest with bulldozers and a shopping center going up, animals fleeing or stuck. The lack-of-predators drawing tends to show one species (usually deer or rabbits) exploding in number while the plants get stripped bare. Both versions force kids to draw the before AND the after, which is the prediction skill in visual form.

✏ Write It! —

Three open-ended questions in complete sentences. First, what could humans do to conserve and protect ecosystems? Second, what would happen to the ocean if sharks were removed from the ecosystem (the apex predator question, similar to the elk-without-wolves question from Explore It! but in a marine context)? Third, explain how overgrazing has a negative impact on an ecosystem. The shark question is the one to watch for the cleanest prediction work. Kids who can trace it (less sharks → more big fish → fewer small fish → algae overgrowth → coral damage) are showing the full ecosystem-prediction skill.

📝 Assess It! —

Three multiple-choice questions plus a fill-in-the-paragraph that uses all five Read It! vocabulary words (ecosystem, matter, competition, invasive species, biodiversity). The multiple choice tests whether students can identify a consumer example (a lion eating a zebra, NOT two animals fighting over water), spot the change that's LEAST likely to disrupt energy flow (increased rainfall, vs. overgrazing or deforestation), and recognize what's NOT a way to lessen human impact (throwing recyclables away). The paragraph stitches the five vocabulary words back into one connected story about ecosystem change and biodiversity.

Bonus Challenge It! station for early finishers

🏆 Challenge It! —

Four optional extensions: build a crossword puzzle with at least 10 vocabulary words and an answer key (paper or via Discovery Education's puzzlemaker), write a haiku summarizing the lesson, write a short story about how a business owner could affect an ecosystem positively, or write a newspaper article about a new highway being built through undeveloped land and the predicted impact on the local ecosystem. Requires teacher approval before they start.

How this fits into a complete Predicting Changes in Ecosystems unit

This Station Lab is the Explore day of our full Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Complete 5E Lesson for TEKS 5.12B. The complete two-week unit follows the 5E method of instruction and includes an Engage hook, the Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Station Lab for Explore, PowerPoint slides and interactive notebook pages for Explain, student choice projects to Elaborate, and an Evaluate assessment.

Most 5th-grade teachers grab the full 5E because the Station Lab lands hardest with the days around it. But if you just need a strong hands-on day on how floods, droughts, fires, and invasive species change ecosystems, the Station Lab on its own does the job.

Two options

Predicting Changes in Ecosystems 5E Lesson cover

Full 5E Lesson $13.20 Get the 5E Lesson

Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Station Lab cover

Just the Station Lab $7.20 Get the Station Lab

Materials needed to teach predicting changes in ecosystems

Materials beyond what's in the download:

Colored pencils or markers for the Illustrate It! station so students can show the before-and-after of human development or a lack of predators in their sketch.
Pencils and the printed answer sheets (included)
A device with internet for the Watch It! station, and for the optional Discovery Education crossword tool at the Challenge It! station.

Standard covered: Texas TEKS 5.12B —

Predict and describe how changes in an ecosystem (such as a flood, drought, fire, or invasive species) can affect the organisms living there.

See the full standard breakdown →

Grade level: 5th grade life science

Time: One to two class periods (45–110 minutes total). Plan for two periods the first time you run a station lab.

Common student misconceptions this lab fixes

"Ecosystem changes are always bad. Anything that disrupts the ecosystem hurts the animals."
5th graders often arrive at this unit thinking "change = damage," because the loud examples (oil spills, deforestation, pollution) are all damaging. But change isn't automatically negative. The Read It! passage names competition as a built-in part of every ecosystem. The Assess It! multiple choice has "increased rainfall" as a possible answer choice for "least likely to disrupt the flow of energy" because more water often HELPS an ecosystem. The Write It! shark-removal question shows that even removing one species (sometimes called change) can cascade in unexpected ways through the food web, but the kids have to think about whether that's good or bad for the species being affected. The point of the standard isn't "change is bad," it's "changes have predictable consequences, and the kids should be able to predict them."
"When an invasive species comes in, all the other animals just move somewhere else. No big deal."
The Research It! invasive species cards make this misconception harder to hold. Invasive species like the bighead carp don't simply share space; they outcompete native species for food and habitat because they have no natural predators in the new ecosystem. The bighead carp map shows established populations spreading up the Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee River basins. The native species can't just "move somewhere else" because their food sources are also tied to specific ecosystems. The Read It! example of invasive ants pushing out native ants makes the same point at a smaller scale. By the end, kids understand that invasive species reduce biodiversity, which reduces an ecosystem's ability to handle other changes, which makes the whole system more fragile.
"If we kill all the predators, the prey animals get to have a good life and there are more of them."
The Explore It! elk-without-predators question is built specifically to dismantle this. Kids think: no wolves means happy elk. They miss the second step. Without predators, the elk population explodes. The elk eat all the grass. The grass disappears. Then the elk starve. The wolves coming back to Yellowstone in 1995 is the classic real-world example of this exact reasoning playing out in reverse. The Write It! shark-removal question is the marine version of the same lesson. The Illustrate It! lack-of-predators drawing forces kids to show both the population boom AND the eventual crash. After the lab, students can hold both ideas at once: predators are scary, but ecosystems need them.

What you get with this Predicting Changes in Ecosystems activity

📷 Inside-the-product — add screenshot of Read It passage or sample answer sheet

When you buy the Station Lab, you get a single download with everything you need:

Print version at two reading levels (Dependent for on-grade, Modified for additional support) plus a Spanish Read It! passage
Digital version as PowerPoint files (works in Google Slides too) at both levels — for 1:1 classrooms or Google Classroom
Teacher Directions and Answer Key for both versions, all keys included
Station task cards ready to print, laminate, and drop in baskets at each station
Reference cards for the Research It! station (8 cards covering deforestation with 1620 and 1926 U.S. virgin-forest maps, drought with U.S. Drought Monitor map, and invasive species with bighead carp spread map)
Three Explore It! photos (sheep on mountain road, clear-cut forest by lake, elk wading across river)
Sort cards for the Organize It! station (6 cause-effect pairs covering development, water diversion, air pollution, overhunting, invasive species, and overgrazing)
Student answer sheets for each level

Tips for teaching predicting changes in ecosystems in your 5th grade classroom

Two things make this lab go smoother the first time:

1. Push the prediction beyond the first answer at Explore It!.

The Explore It! photo questions are the heart of the prediction skill, but 5th graders tend to stop at the first answer. "The road hurts the ecosystem." Okay, HOW? Push them to step two. "The road splits the deer's habitat in half, so they can't get to the water on the other side, so they have to either swim across or stay on the dry side, so the deer on the dry side might starve." Same for the logging photo. "The trees are gone" is step one. "The birds that lived in the trees lost their nests, the squirrels lost their food, the soil washes into the lake when it rains, and the lake gets cloudy so the fish can't see prey" is the full prediction. When you walk by groups at this station, ask one question: "What happens NEXT?" Then again. Three rounds and the kids are doing the actual standard.

2. Use Texas examples to make the changes feel local.

Most of the changes in this lab are framed nationally (the deforestation maps cover the whole U.S., the bighead carp map is the Mississippi basin). Texas-specific examples make the lesson hit harder. For drought, mention the 2011 Texas drought that killed an estimated 300 million trees statewide. For invasive species, mention zebra mussels in Lake Travis, Lake Belton, and other Texas reservoirs, or fire ants almost everywhere. For habitat loss, mention how the urban sprawl around Austin and Dallas has eaten into native prairie and oak woodland habitats. Kids who recognize a name from their own region pay more attention to the prediction work.

Get this Predicting Changes in Ecosystems activity

Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Station Lab for 5th grade life science — TEKS 5.12B

Buy the Station Lab — $7.20

Or if you want the full two-week experience with the Engage hook, Explain day, Elaborate extension, and Evaluate assessment all included:

Buy the full 5E Complete Lesson — $13.20

(Station Lab is included)

Frequently asked questions

What does TEKS 5.12B cover?

Texas TEKS 5.12B asks 5th grade students to predict and describe how changes in an ecosystem (such as a flood, drought, fire, or invasive species) can affect the organisms living there. Students should be able to take a starting condition, apply a specific change, and forecast what will happen to the plants and animals.

What types of changes does this Station Lab cover?

Several. Deforestation (with U.S. virgin-forest maps from 1620 and 1926), drought (with a real U.S. Drought Monitor map), invasive species (with a bighead carp spread map for the Mississippi River basin), overhunting, water diversion, air pollution from fossil fuels, overgrazing by cattle, and loss of apex predators. The full range of disruption types from the standard is covered.

How long does this Predicting Changes in Ecosystems activity take?

One to two class periods (45 to 110 minutes total). The Explore It! station with three real photos to analyze is the longest piece, so plan for two periods the first time you run a station lab. Once your class has the rotation routine down, most groups can finish all 8 stations in one period.

Do I need a lot of supplies for this?

Almost nothing. Colored pencils for the Illustrate It! station and a device with internet for the Watch It! station. Everything else (the three photos, the cause-effect cards, the reference cards) is included in the download.

Can I use this in a 1:1 digital classroom?

Yes. The full digital version (PowerPoint or Google Slides) works in 1:1 classrooms and Google Classroom. Students drag the cause-effect cards into the matching positions at the Organize It! station and type their answers. The Explore It! photo analysis works just as well on a screen as on paper.