Amphibians

Read Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel (ISBN: 978-0064440202). Discuss how frog and toad are similar and how they are different characters. Further your discussion by talking about how real frogs are different than real toads.

Read Scholastic True or False: Amphibians by Melvin Berger (ISBN: 978-0545202077) and discuss the textual features found in the book.

Explain in great detail the differences between amphibians and reptiles. These two classes are often confused or mistaken.

Use plastic toy amphibians to create story problems about animals coming and going from a pond. Students can draw pictures of ponds to use as a work mat.

Create a pie chart comparing the different stages of a frog's life. Label the sections.

Examples of patterns could include that all animals need food in order to live and grow, and the different kinds of food needed by different types of animals. Animals obtain their food from plants or from other animals.

Plants and animals can change their environment. Things that people do to live comfortably can affect the environments around them. But they can make choices that reduce their impacts on the land, water, air, and other living things.

Living things need water, air, and resources from the land, and they live in places that have the things they need. Plants, animals, and their surroundings make up a system.

Things that people do can affect the world around them. People can reduce their effects on the land, water, air, and other living things. 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.

Animals have body parts that capture and convey different kinds of information needed for growth and survival. Animals respond to these inputs with behaviors that help them survive. Different animals use their body parts in different ways to see, hear, grasp objects, protect themselves, move from place to place, and seek and take in food.

There are many different kinds of living things in any area, and they exist in different places on land and in water.

Reproduction is essential to the continued existence of every kind of organism. Plants and animals have unique and diverse life cycles.

Characteristics result from individuals’ interactions with the environment, which can range from diet to learning.

Animals have various body systems with specific functions for sustaining life: skeletal, circulatory, respiratory, muscular, digestive, etc.

Different sense receptors are specialized for particular kinds of information, which may be then processed by the animal’s brain. Animals are able to use their perceptions and memories to guide their actions.

Fossils provide evidence about the types of organisms that lived long ago and also about the nature of their environments.

Sometimes the differences in characteristics between individuals of the same species provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing

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, such as fungi and bacteria, break down dead organisms (both plants and animals) and therefore operate as “decomposers.” Decomposition eventually restores (recycles) some materials back to the soil. 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.

Populations live in a variety of habitats, and change in those habitats affects the organisms living there. 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.

Human activities in agriculture, industry, and everyday life have effects on the land, vegetation, streams, ocean, air, and even outer space. Individuals and communities can often mitigate these effects through innovation and technology.

In multicellular organisms, the body is a system of multiple interacting subsystems. These subsystems are groups of cells that work together to form tissues and organs that are specialized for particular body functions

Organisms, and populations of organisms, are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors. In any ecosystem, organisms and populations with similar requirements for food, water, oxygen, or other resources may compete with each other for limited resources, access to which consequently constrains their growth and reproduction. Growth of organisms and population increases are limited by access to resources.

Similarly, predatory interactions may reduce the number of organisms or eliminate whole populations of organisms. Mutually beneficial interactions, in contrast, may become so interdependent that each organism requires the other for survival. Although the species involved in these competitive, predatory, and mutually beneficial interactions vary across ecosystems, the patterns of interactions of organisms with their environments, both living and nonliving, are shared.

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.

Ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time. Disruptions to any physical or biological component of an ecosystem can lead to shifts in all its populations. Further Explanation: Emphasis is on recognizing patterns in data and making warranted inferences about changes in populations, and on evaluating empirical evidence supporting arguments about changes to ecosystems.

Biodiversity describes the variety of species found in Earth’s terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems. The completeness or integrity of an ecosystem’s biodiversity is often used as a measure of its health.

Natural selection leads to the predominance of certain traits in a population, and the suppression of others. Emphasis is on using concepts of natural selection, including overproduction of offspring, passage of time, variation in a population, selection of favorable traits, and heritability of traits.

Human activities can positively and negatively influence the biosphere, sometimes altering natural habitats and ecosystems. Examples of the design process include examining human interactions and designing feasible solutions that promote stewardship. Examples can include water usage (such as stream and river use, aquifer recharge, or dams and levee construction); land usage (such as urban development, agriculture, wetland benefits, stream reclamation, or fire restoration); and pollution (such as of the air, water, or land).