Teacher Guide

EcoBalance teacher guide

Use this guide to turn the app into a structured ecology lesson about feedback, lag, carrying capacity, and collapse rather than a slider-only experience.

Open application Learner guide Standards

Quick Start

Recommended band

Upper middle school through introductory college ecology, depending on how deeply you foreground modeling assumptions.

Typical duration

One 25-40 minute investigation or a longer paired lesson with CER writing and model critique.

Device assumptions

Laptop or tablet preferred. The workbench is responsive, but comparing multiple runs is easier on a wider screen.

Teacher Moves

Set up the question

Begin with a concrete predator-prey story and ask what a healthy versus collapsing system would look like.
Have learners predict lag between prey and predator response.
Keep carrying capacity and predation pressure conceptually distinct.

During the run

Have learners change one ecological factor at a time.
Ask them to justify whether they are seeing stability, oscillation, overshoot, or collapse.
Require evidence from the curves before interpretation.

Suggested Evidence Tasks

Prompt

Which matters more in your comparison: carrying capacity, predation rate, or predator death rate? Use the run outputs as evidence.

Listen for

Recognition of lag between prey and predator peaks.
Clear use of system curves rather than intuition alone.
Willingness to revise first impressions when a second run complicates the story.