Reflect & Synthesize:
Answer the following questions in your blog post. Remember to have at least one follow-up sentence for each question, when possible.

1. What do living things get from their ecosystems?
2. What evidence do you have to support your answer to Question 1?
3. What does the term ecosystem mean, based on your experience in this lesson? (Don't use the definition from the BIG IDEA here. Put it into your own words.)
4. Brainstorm at least one question you have about Ecosystems that you hope you learn from this unit.
5. Look at the image below that shows a portion of a forest ecosystem. Name at least five components (living or non-living things) of the ecosystem that you can either observe directly or infer.
6. What are three (or more) interactions that might occur in this portion of the forest ecosystem?

Answers:
1. Living things get food, water, air, a nice place to live (home) from their ecosystems. They get some other living things to interact with other them and a cool place to explore and create a home.
2. I have evidence from my experience when the whole class went outside and looked at the ecosystem outside of the school. We looked at our ecosystem and saw cool things.
3. They term of ecosystem means that a group of living organisms that interact with other non living things that are in there homes. 
4. I hope to learn what the difference between a habitat and an ecosystem.
5. Ducks, Trees, Fish, Weeds, Plants
6. Ducks are communicating with each other, Ducks are playing with each other, and fish that are looking for food.

1: I think that the poem is about like, you can do whatever you want and that you are in control and that the kid on the skateboard and do anything. He can curve and sway, speed and sail, and have a fun time!
2: I think that this poem was actually really close to its title because when the author said that Mama broke the spell, that really sounds like enchantment.
3:
4:

1: The shape of the poem kind of looks like a skate board and a kite so the author was maybe trying to say that this poem might be about a skateboard or something that kids do outdoors or if they are bored. The shape of the poem kind of goes in a pattern because the first sentence has 1 word then 3 words then 5 words so the poem could be a pattern but I don't know if the author intended to make it like a poem. The shape of the poem actually kind of looks like a head since you can control your body anyway you want it. 
2:
3:
4:

• We need to be warm because Mars is farther than Earth and has freezing temperatures about -80º degrees in the winter equator! It reaches to about 70º degrees in summer equator.
• If we go to mars when it is on the other side of the sun, then it would take us longer to get there and that would be foolish.
• We have to watch out to not suffocate from air that is on Mars because Mars' atmosphere is made out of carbon dioxide and if we breathe carbon dioxide we will suffocate and die Their also is almost no oxygen on Mars.
• Mars has low gravity so that means that we could bounce a lot and if we have low gravity, we might float away from the planet and die.
• Mars has no oceans or seas so how would we get our water if it has no oceans/seas?
• We have to watch out for giant volcanoes that might erupt. We could die from that because of the tense lava that flows fast.
• We also have to watch out for very deep craters that we might get stuck in and then we can't get out.
• We need to watch out for sand dunes because they move and we could get stuck in one.
• Mars has invisible water so how could we find the water. We would die if we cant drink any water!
• Mars has a huge amount of dust so if it becomes a dust storm, we could get trapped in them and maybe die. The storms also last for days and maybe even weeks!
• Mars has super low pressure. If you were exposed to that pressure the other gases inside your body would be uneven and we would technically explode from to much pressure inside our body.
• Mars has red dust which contains rust and if we breathe in that red dust that is grainy,  then we will choke.
• Mars is constantly zapped by high-energy radiation from the sun. So then the rays would penetrate our body and would damage our cells overtime. Over that time, we might get cancer and die.
• We could die from dangerous "aliens" if they are deadly and not friendly.
• We could die if we run out of food so we would have to grow food on Mars right when we get their so we can have a good source. 

Man am I worried about all of these problems we're going to possibly face while on Mars!  I can't believe I got myself into this!

First of all, how can we live if... Mars has freezing cold temperatures? We're going to freeze to death and be like popsicles and it would probably never get warm on mars so we would stay like popsicles forever! And it's not like anyone is going to save me. Mars has so many problems and I thought that it only had a little like we would run out of food and find no water. Now I am kind of scared that I might die and so will be teammates. And if I am alone on Mars that won't be good either because the class needs each other. If we even loose one teammate we might not be able to survive on Mars because we all have different and important jobs to do. Like Yuki Ito, he is the plumber and if we loose a plumber then we will be in big trouble because the plumber is like the most important. Same with Zuzanna Nowak, she is the doctor and if we loose her than I can't be treated when I am sick or any of our teammates! Now I really wished I didn't have to go to Mars because I really don't want to die. I have a family, awesome friends, and I want to live my life until I am old and die because of something else! 

1. My body responded when the paper ball was thrown at me by: While I was holding the see-through paper, my partner through the ball at me and she told me that I held the paper even stronger. I believe I did that because I was scared. I also ducked my head to avoid getting hit by the ball. I closed my eyes and scrunched my face a little because I was scared again that I was going to get hit.
2. These reflexes that I did while the ball was getting hit at my face would be good when I didn't have the see-through paper because I ducked my head so I would get avoid getting hit by the ball because then my face wouldn't get hit. I also scrunched my face and closed my eyes so I protected my eyes while getting hit.
3.

1. Can you feel it when your pupils dilate?
2. Do you have any control over your pupils when they dilate?
3. What do we call this when a reflex happens without our control?
4. Why do our pupils get bigger in the dark and smaller in the light?
5. How does this reflex protect our eyes?

1. Actually, not really, I can't really feel when my pupils dilate. But it does hurt when I put my eyes into the light/sunlight.
2. I do have a little control over my pupils when they are dilated because I can go into the light and my pupils will get smaller in the light. But I believe you can't really control over your pupils but that is one idea.
3. We call this an involuntary reflex that happens without our control. It happens even when we don't think about like blinking or breathing.
4. I think that our pupils get bigger in the dark and smaller in the light is because i believe there is a part in our eye that controls our pupil and controls when it gets bigger or smaller.
5. I think that this reflex protects our eyes because if our pupils are always un-dilated, then too much light will get into our eyes and something bad might happen. The same with dilated pupils, to much darkness gets into our eyes and something else bad might happen.

1. I think that the sense of hearing was more difficult than all the other senses because I never knew when my partner was going to snap and my partner never knew when I was going to stop. I think the sense of sight was the easiest because you could see when your partner was about to do something like clench his fist of nod his head.
2. We could use the sense of smell by: I could use a bit of hand sanitize on my hand and put my hand close to my partner's nose. So when he smelled the hand sanitize, that would indicate for him that I was about to drop the ruler and it was time for him to catch it.
3. For the taste, my partner had the great idea of having a piece of chocolate on a string. So my partner would have his mouth open and I will gently put the piece of chocolate in his mouth. And when it would be in his mouth, that would tell me that it was time for me to drop that ruler and it was time for him to catch it.
4. So when my partner, for example, stomped on my foot, the nerves in my foot sent a message to my brain and the brain sent a message to fingers that it was time for me to put my fingers together to catch the ruler.
7. No, they both did not respond in the same way because for the blinking, you can not control blinking when you are not thinking about it but when you are thinking about it you can control it. Catching the ruler you have to think about catching the ruler because if you do not, the ruler will just fall to the ground without you catching it. Blinking uses the sense of sight because when you see something, you might want to blink because of that. Catching the ruler uses the sense of everything, sight, touch, hearing, tasting, and smelling. So technically you could use all the senses for catching a ruler because they are all possible. Blinking and catching a ruler does use muscles because whatever is able to move in the body has a muscle. For catching a ruler you do have to think about the action but for blinking, you don't really have to.

Answers:
1. I know that NASA needs to think about what they are going to bring to Mars because it is not like you can go to a store on Mars and buy anything you need there, you need to bring supplies that they really need and can't live without. They also need to be efficient with energy because energy is really valuable and if you run out of energy, then the will be stuck on Mars,

2. It would take 6 months to get to mars when the Earth would about to swing past Mars. When Earth swings Then, the ship would use less fuel then if Earth wasn't as close to Mars. If the astronauts decided not to take the trip while the Earth was close to mars, then the whole journey would be 250,00 miles long which is 2 and a half years!

3. The astronauts will definitely need food and water to live because you can not live without food and water.  You would just die in space. I learned that there is actually a machine that turns astronauts urine into drinkable water! Weird! They also need exercise because like the video said, in space your bones loose calcium and your muscles loose their strength so exercise is really important.

4. I think some of the risks of traveling to Mars might be that the video said that sometimes you might get angry with a crew member that is on board with you and you won't want to talk to him/her but then when you have to do an important job with him/her, then you just forget about how angry you were. I think another risk of traveling to Mars might be some dangerous disasters that might happen like loosing energy for a month or crashing or anything like that.

5. Since I am going to Mars and so is the whole class, I would like to bring food and water, because humans can't live without food and water for long. Also you could make oxygen out of water so that would be a good reason to bring water. Some stuff that would make me not bored like board games and something that is fun to do. I also would like to take a good supply of tools so I could fix something that might break on the space ship. i would take medicine in case I get sick and need to take it, and a space suit so I won't die on Mars.