Here are correlations to the National Common Core Language and Math standards and to the Idaho State Science Standards. If you'd like, you may go directly to the Idaho science standards for this topic. For more information about the overall standards, see the complete Idaho Content Standards for Science, the Next Generation Science Standards, the Common Core Language standards, or the Common Core Math standards.
Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order and provide some sense of closure.
After planting a seed and observing its growth, write three sentences about the sequential process of germination.
Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.
Draw a diagram of the parts of a flowering plant, giving a description of the function of each part.
Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.
Spend some time at the Plant Conservation and Endangered Plants websites. Then write a persuasive essay about the importance of protecting threatened plant species, supporting claims with evidence.
When counting objects, say the number names in the standard order, pairing each object with one and only one number name and each number name with one and only one object.
Cut open a variety of fruits (apple, avocado, pumpkin, etc.). Count the number of seeds in each one. Place the fruits in order from the fewest to the greatest number of seeds.
Measure the length of an object by selecting and using appropriate tools such as rulers, yardsticks, meter sticks, and measuring tapes.
Plant bean seeds in both darkness and light. An extension might include planting seeds in both warm and cold temperatures, or using different amounts of water. Measure the growth of the plants each day. Make a chart to compare the growth of plants under different conditions.
Use place value understanding to round multi-digit whole numbers to any place.
Design a garden plot on graph paper in the shape of a rectangle. Compute the area and the perimeter. Extension: Given an area measurement (20 square feet), decide how long and how wide the garden needs to be. Are there more ways than one to design the garden to contain a particular area?
Use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive
All animals need food in order to live and grow. They obtain their food from plants or from other animals. Plants need water and light to live and grow. Animals need to take in food but plants produce their own.
Use a model to represent the relationship between the needs of different plants and animals and the places they live.
Living things need water, air, and resources from the land, and they live in places that have the things they need. An example of a relationship is that grasses need sunlight so they often grow in meadows, while deer eat buds and leaves so they usually live in forested areas. Plants, animals and their surroundings make up a system. Humans use natural resources for everything they do.
Use materials to design a solution to a human problem by mimicking how plants and/or animals use their external parts to help them survive, grow, and meet their needs.
All organisms have external parts. Plants have different parts (roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits) that help them survive and grow. Plants also respond to some external inputs. Examples of human problems that can be solved by mimicking plant solutions could include stabilizing structures by mimicking roots on plants, or keeping out intruders by mimicking thorns on branches.
Develop models to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycle but all have in common birth, growth, reproduction, and death.
Reproduction is essential to the continued existence of every kind of organism. Plants and animals have unique and diverse life cycles.
Make observations to construct an evidence-based account that young plants and animals are like, but not exactly like, their parents.
Young plants and animals are very much, but not exactly, like their parents. Individuals of the same kind of plant or animal are recognizable as similar but can also vary in many ways. Examples of observations could include leaves from the same kind of the plant that are the same shape but can differ in size.
Plan and conduct an investigation to determine if plants need sunlight and water to grow.
Plants depend on water and light to grow.
Develop a simple model that mimics the function of an animal in dispersing seeds or pollinating plants.
Plants depend on animals for pollination or to move their seeds around. Designs can be conveyed through sketches, drawings, or physical models. These representations are useful in communicating ideas for a problem's solutions to other people.
Make observations of plants and animals to compare the diversity of life in different habitats.
There are many different kinds of living things in any area, and they exist in different places on land and in water.
Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence that plants and animals have traits inherited from parents and that variation of these traits exists in a group of similar organisms.
Many characteristics of organisms are inherited from their parents. Different organisms vary in how they look and function because they have different inherited information.
Use evidence to support the explanation that traits can be influenced by the environment.
Other characteristics result from individuals' interactions with the environment. Examples of the environment affecting a trait could include normally tall plants grown with insufficient water are stunted. Many characteristics involve both inheritance and environment.
Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction.
Plants and animals have both internal and external structures that serve various functions in growth, survival, behavior, and reproduction. Examples of plant structures could include thorns, stems, roots, colored petals.
Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment.
Emphasis is on the idea that matter that is not food (air, water, decomposed materials in soil) is changed by plants into matter that is food. The food of almost any kind of animal can be traced back to plants. Organisms are related in food webs in which some animals eat plants for food and other animals eat the animals that eat plants. Some organisms break down dead organisms (both plants or plants parts and animals) and therefore operate as "decomposers." Matter cycles between the air and soil and among plants and animals as these organisms live and die. Plants obtain gases and water from the environment and release waste matter (gases) back into the environment.
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. Newly introduced species can damage the balance of an ecosystem.
Use models to describe that energy in animals' food (used for body repair, growth, motion, and to maintain body warmth) was once energy from the sun.
The energy released from food was once energy from the sun that was captured by plants in the chemical process that forms plant matter (from air and water). Examples of models could include diagrams, and flow charts.
Support an argument that plants get the materials they need for growth chiefly from air and water.
Emphasis is on the idea that plant matter comes mostly from air and water, not from the soil.
Use evidence to construct an explanation for how the variations in characteristics among individuals of the same species may provide advantages in surviving and reproduction.
Examples of cause and effect relationships could be plants that have larger thorns than other plants may be less likely to be eaten by predators.
Construct an argument with evidence that in a particular habitat some organisms can survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all.
Examples of evidence could include needs and characteristics of the organisms and habitats involved. The organisms and their habitat make up a system in which the parts depend on each other.
Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for the role of photosynthesis in the cycling of matter and flow of energy into and out of organisms.
Plants use the energy from light to make sugars (food) from carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and water through the process of photosynthesis, which also releases oxygen. These sugars can be used immediately or stored for growth or later use. Emphasis is on tracing movement of matter and flow of energy.
Develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem.
Food webs are models that demonstrate how matter and energy is transferred between producers, consumers, and decomposers as the three groups interact within an ecosystem. Transfers of matter into and out of the physical environment occur at every level. Decomposers recycle nutrients from dead plant or animal matter back to the soil in terrestrial environments or to the water in aquatic environments. The atoms that make up the organisms in an ecosystem are cycled repeatedly between the living and nonliving parts of the ecosystem.
Develop a model to describe the flow of energy through the trophic levels of an ecosystem.
Food webs can be broken down into multiple energy pyramids. Concepts should include the 10% rule of energy and biomass transfer between trophic levels and the environment. Emphasis is on describing the transfer of mass and energy beginning with producers, moving to primary and secondary consumers, and ending with decomposers.
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