Human actions cause damage to many ecosystems. Choose an ecosystem familiar to students and provide research materials for further learning about it. Guide student research with questions about how the ecosystem has or may be damaged by the actions of people. Instruct students to create a project that describes the ecosystem's natural elements, the damage people may cause it and what actions people could take to prevent further damage.
Students are often introduced during elementary school to food chains and webs. However, in sixth grade students take this further and investigate the interaction between food webs in an ecosystem. For example both bears and birds of prey may eat the fish available in an ecosystem stream so their food webs would intersect. Have students create an example of food webs that intersect. Projects might include a model on foam board created with string to show the web connections or a computer graphics model.
Elementary school exposes students to terms such as "mammal" and "reptile" but sixth graders will not have learned all the animal kingdoms or how, for example, Arthropods differ from Insects. Require students to study animal kingdoms and how they differ. Afterwards, have them examine an ecosystem and make a chart sorting the animals living in it by animal kingdom.
Teach students that animals adapt to environments in order to survive and that when adaptations do not work in a changing environment, animals become endangered. Choose an ecosystem in which animals are endangered such as the rainforest. Instruct students to identify endangered animals. Students then create a project to illustrate the factors that caused the animal endangerment and propose a solution to save the animal species from further harm.