THE BUZZ ON BEES 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. 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
LS1C: All animals need food in order to live and grow. They obtain their food from plants or from other animals. p.147
LS1D: Animals have body parts that capture and convey different kinds of information needed for growth and survival – for example, eyes for light, ears for sounds, and skin for temperature or touch. Animals respond to these inputs with behaviors that help them survive (e.g. find food, run from a predator). p.149
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. Plants depend on air, water, minerals (in the soil), and light to grow. Animals can move around but plants cannot, and they often depend on animals for pollination or to move their seeds around. p.151
LS2D: Being part of a group helps animals obtain food, defend themselves, and cope with changes. Groups may serve different functions and vary dramatically in size. p.156
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: 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
LS1C: Animals and plants alike generally need to take in air and water, animals must take in food, and plants need light and minerals; p.148
LS1D: Different sense receptors are specialized for particular kinds of information, which may then be processed and integrated by an animal’s brain, with some information stored as memories. Animals are able to use their perceptions and memories to guide their actions. Some responses to information are instinctive – that is, animals’ brains are organized so that they do not have to think about how to respond to certain stimuli. p.149
LS2A: The food of almost any kind of animal can be traced back to plants. p.151-152
Grades 6-8 Disciplinary Core Ideas
LS1A: Unicellular organisms (microorganisms), like multicellular organisms, need food, water, a way to dispose of waste, and an environment in which they can live. p.144
LS2A: Organisms and populations of organisms are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors… Mutually beneficial interactions, in contrast, may become so interdependent that each organism requires the other for survival. p.152
LS2D: Groups may form because of genetic relatedness, physical proximity, or other recognition mechanisms (which may be species specific). They engage in a variety of signaling behaviors to maintain the group’s integrity or to warn of threats. Groups often dissolve if they no longer function to meet individuals’ needs, if dominant members lose their place, or if other key members are removed from the group through death, predation, or exclusion by other members. p.157
THE BUZZ ON BEES 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 K.G: Identify and describe shapes (squares, circles, triangles, rectangles, hexagons, cubes, cones, cylinders, and spheres).
Grades 3-5 Common Core Standards
Mathematics Standard 4.MD: Measure angles in whole-number degrees using a protractor.
Nearby Nature 