SNAGS AND ROTTING LOGS ALIGNMENT WITH
NEXT GENERATION SCIENCE STANDARDS
The activities in this unit help children understand the basic concepts in the Disciplinary Core Ideas listed here. You can use the following list as a guide for lesson planning. These Disciplinary Core Ideas are taken from Grade Band Endpoints in A Framework for K-12 Science Education. Additionally, our activities give children opportunities to engage in many of the Science and Engineering Practices and reflect on the Crosscutting Concepts as identified in the Next Generation Science Standards.
Grades K-2 Disciplinary Core Ideas
LS1B: Plants and animals have predictable characteristics at different stages of development. Plants and animals grow and change. Adult plants and animals can have young. In many kinds of animals, parents and the offspring themselves engage in behaviors that help the offspring to survive. p.146
LS2A: Animals depend on their surroundings to get what they need, including food, water, shelter, & a favorable temperature. p.151
LS2B: Organisms obtain the materials they need to grow and survive from the environment. Many of these materials come from organisms and are used again by other organisms. p.153
LS2C: The places where plants and animals live often change, sometimes slowly and sometimes rapidly. p.155
Grades 3-5 Disciplinary Core Ideas
LS1B: Reproduction is essential to the continued existence of every kind of organism. Plants and animals have unique and diverse life cycles that include being born (sprouting in plants), growing, developing into adults, reproducing, and eventually dying. p.146
LS2A: Decomposition eventually restores (recycles) some materials back to the soil for plants to use. p.151-152
LS2B: Matter cycles between the air and soil and among plants, animals, and microbes as these organisms live and die. p.153
LS2C: When the environment changes in ways that affect a place’s physical characteristics, temperature, or availability of resources, some organisms survive and reproduce, others move to new locations, yet others move into the transformed environment, and some die. p.155
Grades 6-8 Disciplinary Core Ideas
LS1B: Organisms reproduce, either sexually or asexually, and transfer their genetic information to their offspring. Animals engage in characteristic behaviors that increase the odds of reproduction. p.146
LS2A: Organisms and populations of organisms are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors. p.152
LS2B: Decomposers recycle nutrients from dead plant or animal matter back to the soil in terrestrial environments or to the water in aquatic environments. p.153
LS2C: Ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time. p.155
LS4D: Biodiversity is the wide range of existing life forms that have adapted to the variety of conditions on Earth, from terrestrial to marine ecosystems. p.167
SNAGS AND ROTTING LOGS ALIGNMENT WITH
COMMON CORE STANDARDS
In addition to science content, activities in this unit also can help students to practice the following mathematics and language arts concepts. The Common Core Standards listed here are in addition to the ones that our activities typically address, as listed in the Four Winds document, The Nature Program: Alignment with Learning Standards.
Grades K-6 Common Core Standards
Writing Standard 8: Recall relevant information from experiences or gather relevant information from print and digital resources; take notes and categorize information, and provide a list of resources.
Nearby Nature 