STREAM LIFE 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
LS1A: All organisms have external parts. Different animals use their body parts in different ways to see, hear, grasp objects, protect themselves, move from place to place, and seek, find and take in food, water and air. p.144
LS1B: Plants and animals have predictable characteristics at different stages of development. Plants and animals grow and change. p.146
LS1C: All animals need food in order to live and grow. They obtain their food from plants or from other animals. p.147
LS2A: Animals depend on their surroundings to get what they need, including food, water, shelter, and a favorable temperature. Animals depend on plants or other animals for food. They use their senses to find food and water and their body parts to gather, catch, eat, and chew the food. 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
LS3A: Organisms have characteristics that can be similar or different. Young animals are very much, but not exactly, like their parents and also resemble other animals of the same kind. p.158
LS3B: Individuals of the same kind of plant or animal are recognizable as similar but can also vary in many ways. p.160
LS4C: Living things can survive only where their needs are met. If some places are too hot or too cold or have too little water or food, plants and animals may not be able to live there. p.165
LS4D: There are many different kinds of living things in any area, and they exist in different places on land and in water. p.166
ESS2A: Wind and water can change the shape of the land. The resulting landforms, together with the materials on the land, provide homes for living things. p.180
ESS2B: Rocks, soils, and sand are present in most areas where plants and animals live. There may also be rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds. p.183
ESS2C: Water is found in the ocean, rivers, lakes, & ponds. It carries soil & rocks from one place to another and determines the variety of life forms that can live in a particular location. p.184
Grades 3-5 Disciplinary Core Ideas
LS1A: Plants and animals have both internal and external structures that serve various functions in growth, survival, behavior and reproduction. p.144
LS1B: 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
LS1C: Animals and plants alike generally need to take in air and water. p.148
LS2A: Organisms are related in food webs in which some animals eat plants for food and other animals eat the animals that eat plants. Organisms can survive only in environments in which their particular needs are met. A healthy ecosystem is one in which multiple species of different types are each able to meet their needs in a relatively stable web of life. p.151-152
LS2B: Organisms obtain gases, water, and minerals from the environment and release waste matter (gas, liquid, or solid) back into the environment. p.153
LS4D:Scientists have identified and classified many plants & animals. Populations of organisms live in a variety of habitats, & change in those habitats affects the organisms living there. p.167
Grades 6-8 Disciplinary Core Ideas
LS1C: Animals obtain food from eating plants or eating other animals. p.148
LS2A: Organisms and populations of organisms are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors. p.152
LS2B: Food webs are models that demonstrate how matter and energy is transferred between producers (generally plants and other organisms that engage in photosynthesis), consumers, and decomposers as the three groups interact—primarily for food—within an ecosystem. p.153
STREAM LIFE 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-2 Common Core Standards
Mathematics Standard 2.OA: Use addition and subtraction within 100 to solve one- and two-step word problems.
Grades 3-5 Common Core Standards
Reading for Informational Text Standard 7: Draw on information from multiple print or digital sources, demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a question quickly or to solve a problem efficiently.
Mathematics Standard 3.MD: Generate measurement data by measuring lengths using rulers marked with halves and fourths of an inch.
Grades 6-8 Common Core Standards
Mathematics Standard 6.SP: Summarize numerical data sets in relation to their context, such as by giving quantitative measures of center (median and/or mean) and variability, as well as describing any overall pattern and any striking deviations from the overall pattern with reference to the context in which the data were gathered.
Mathematics Standard 6.RP: Understand ratio concepts and use ratio reasoning to solve problems. Find a percent of a quantity as a rate per 100.
Nearby Nature 