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Grade 4. The Plant and Animal Structures unit kit includes a Teacher's Guide, a voucher for living materials, and enough supplies and apparatus for a class of up to 30 students. During Plant and Animal Structures, students explore the life science concept of form and function in plants and animals. Through purposeful exploration, students recognize that organisms have special features adapted for survival, which prompts them to ask more questions and leads to further investigation. Students have opportunities to learn about a variety of organisms and are prompted to identify similarities and differences among them using their own schema of external characteristics, behavior patterns, habitats, and other features, realizing that there is a variety of ways to classify things. Throughout the unit, students record daily observations of live organisms in science notebooks, student activity sheets, and class charts as they study the changes and behaviors among them.
The Plant and Animal Structures unit addresses the following standards:
Next Generation Science Standards
Disciplinary Core Ideas
Engineering Practices
Crosscutting Concepts
Common Core State Standards
Language Arts
L.4.4
L.4.6
RI.4.7
RI.4.9
RL.4.3
RL.4.6
RL.4.9
SL.4.1c, d
W.4.1b
W.4.2d
Math
4.MD.A.2
4.MD.B.4
4.NBT.B.6
American Association for the Advancement of Science Benchmarks
The Living Environment
Diversity of Life
Evolution of Life
The Human Organism
Basic Functions
Scientific Inquiry
The Scientific Worldview
Systems
Manipulation and Observation
Lesson-by-Lesson Summary
Lesson 1: Adaptations
This unit begins with a brainstorming session to assess what students know about plants and animals and the environments in which they live. Students are introduced to physical attributes that enable arctic animals to live in extreme temperatures. They observe how the structures of a carnivorous plant help it catch insects to get nutrients.
Lesson 2: Animal Structures
Students observe characteristics of different animals and classify them by one of the most basic characteristics used for classification of animals, the backbone. After determining the difference between an endoskeleton and exoskeleton, students design a hermit crab body and select a shell to simulate on their models the added protection hermit crabs have to protect their soft abdomens. Students then investigate how animals use their senses to respond to their surroundings by investigating the usefulness of the sense of sound. Students use their sense of hearing to identify different objects based on the sound each makes.
Lesson 3: Plant Structures
By upper elementary, students have a basic understanding of the structures of a plant. This lesson helps build a stronger understanding of the functions of these structures as they investigate the survival needs of a plant. Students test and observe the development of structures and the effects of water and sunlight as they grow their own plants.
Starting with planting a seed at the beginning of a plant life cycle, students observe and record changes as a seed develops into a plant. They test and observe how plants take in water through the roots and sunlight through leaves by conducting controlled experiments. Students record observations and track changes in their science notebooks that will help them to draw conclusions at the end of this unit.
Lesson 4: Animal Reproduction
Students refer to the animals they discussed in Lesson 2 and determine which hatch from eggs and which do not. They then learn that there is an incubation period in which a chick develops inside the egg before it is hatched. Students track the changes to the chick inside the egg during that time using pictures. Students compare the difference in the incubation periods among birds, and discover that beneath the hard shell of an egg is a clear membrane that also helps to protect the egg.
Lesson 5: Plant Reproduction
This lesson starts with the beginning of the life cycle of a plant, the seed. Students look inside a seed and discover that the inside of a seed looks similar to a plant. Students closely examine the characteristics of different seeds and investigate the way seeds are dispersed. Finally, students observe a real-life example of the beginning development stages of the plant life cycle by focusing their observations on the seed they planted in Lesson 3.
Lesson 6: Light Up Your Life
Students observe a reaction their own bodies experience when they are exposed to the sun—that their pupils shrink when exposed to light—and that this reaction occurs because light enters the eye. Students then observe the changes made by the sun on construction paper. They investigate ways to prevent the sun from causing damage.
Lesson 7: Plant Light
Students apply what they have learned about plant structures to how plants use those parts to capture energy from the sun. Students observe a sun tracking behavior in their lima bean seedlings as they “follow” the sun throughout the day. As a culminating activity, students will test and observe the differences between a plant that is exposed to the sun and a plant that is deprived of the sun.