In this activity, students will learn about different measures of biodiversity: richness, Shannon diversity index, and evenness. Students will begin by calculating these indices by hand using a very small sample data set. Students will then read an overview of the Northern Lakes and Forests and Southern Wisconsin Till Plains, two different Wisconsin ecoregions, and use Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel to calculate and compare biodiversity from a Snapshot Wisconsin database

Using three-dimensional scaffolds, these materials address the following topics:  - Atoms, elements, and molecules.- Properties of matter and energy. - Reasoning across systems and scale- Conservation of matter- Combustion as a rearrangement reaction- Chemical bondsEach packet is broken into five parts - data dive, core ideas, investigations, asssessments, and life connections. Formative assessments and checkpoints are embedded throughout each packet. The final packet prepares students for a summative assessment, with a provided practice assessment.Implementation instructions are embedded for each component of each packet. PDFs are included as attachments (in case the file formats are altered by this system). 

In this lesson, students explore an analogy that helps them troubleshoot a problem in an electric circuit. They will then use computer simulations to reconstruct the problem and test other solutions.