Bears


Standards

Idaho State Standards

Here are correlations to the Idaho State Language and Math standards and to the Idaho State Science Standards. For more information about the overall standards, see the complete Idaho Content Standards for Science, the Next Generation Science Standards, and the alignment between Idaho and NGSS Science Standards. You may also access the Idaho English Language Arts/Literacy Standards and Mathematics Standards.

Language

First Grade

ELA/Literacy 1.RS.IP.1

With support, conduct simple research tasks to take some action or make informal presentations by identifying information from classroom experiences or provided sources (including read alouds) and organizing information, recorded in words or pictures, using graphic organizers or other aids.

Suggested Lesson

Make a bear book. Draw and name the 8 kinds of bears. Write one sentence about each kind of bear.

Third Grade

ELA/Literacy 3.W.RW.4

Write personal or fictional stories that recount an event or experience, include details to develop the characters or event(s), and provide a sense of closure.

Suggested Lesson

Smokey Bear represents being careful with fire. Create a fictional story of your own using an animal that represents a different safety concern. For example, turtles and their shells could represent wearing bike helmets.

Fifth Grade

ELA/Literacy 5.RS.IP.1

Conduct short research tasks to take some action or share findings orally or in writing by formulating research questions; gathering relevant and reliable information from both primary and secondary sources as appropriate; paraphrasing and quoting ideas and information; and respecting copyright guidelines for use of that information and any images.

Suggested Lesson

Using this Center for Wildlife Information page as a starting point, research the ways that humans can best help protect bears and stay safe in bear habitat. 

Math

Kindergarten

Math K.MD.A.1

Describe measurable attributes of objects, such as length or weight. Describe several measurable attributes of a single object.

Suggested Lesson

Read Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carl and compare the sizes of the animals in the story.

First Grade

Math 1.OA.A.1

Solve addition and subtraction word problems within 20 involving situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing, with unknowns in all positions, by using physical, visual, and symbolic representations.

Suggested Lesson

Black bears or their relatives live on all continents except Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. Write an equation that represents the continents where black bears do live. Solve and label your answer.

Second Grade

Math 2.MD.A.1

Measure the length of an object by selecting and using appropriate tools such as rulers, yardsticks, meter sticks, and measuring tapes.

Suggested Lesson

Place teacher-made clipart bear paw prints of various sizes on cards. Measure them using rulers.

Sixth Grade

Math 6.SP.A.1

Recognize a statistical question as one that anticipates variability in the data related to the question and accounts for it in the answers. Example: “How old am I?” is not a statistical question, but “How old are the students in my school?” is a statistical question because one anticipates variability in students’ ages.

Suggested Lesson

Create a statistical question about bears. Using the internet and other sources, attempt to find the answer to the question

Science

Kindergarten

Life Sciences K-LS-1.1

Use observations to describe how plants and animals are alike and different in terms of how they live and grow.

Supporting Content

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.

Earth and Space Sciences K-ESS-2.1

Use a model to represent the relationship between the needs of different plants and animals and the places they live.

Supporting Content

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.

First Grade

Life Sciences 1-LS-1.1

Design and build 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.

Supporting Content

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.

Life Sciences 1-LS-1.2

Obtain information to identify patterns of behavior in parents and offspring that help offspring survive.

Supporting Content

Adult animals can have young. In many kinds of animals, parents and the offspring themselves engage in behaviors that help the offspring to survive. Examples of patterns of behaviors could include the signals that offspring make and the responses of the parents (such as feeding, comforting, and protecting the offspring)

Life Sciences 1-LS-2.1

Make observations to construct an evidence-based explanation that offspring are similar to, but not identical to, their parents.

Supporting Content

Individuals of the same kind of animal are recognizable as similar but can also vary in many ways. Young animals are very much, but not exactly like, their parents. An individual of a particular breed looks like its parents but is not exactly the same.

Second Grade

Life Sciences 2-LS-2.1

Make observations of plants and animals to compare the diversity of life in different habitats.

Supporting Content

There are many different kinds of living things in any area, and they exist in different places on land. The emphasis is on the diversity of living things in each of a variety of different habitats.

Third Grade

Life Sciences 3-LS-3.2

Use evidence to support the explanation that traits can be influenced by the environment.

Supporting Content

Interactions with the environment affect the characteristics that organisms develop.

Fourth Grade

Life Sciences 4-LS-1.1

Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction.

Supporting Content

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

Life Sciences 4-LS-1.2

Use a model to describe how animals receive different types of information through their senses, process the information in their brain, and respond to the information in different ways.

Supporting Content

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.

Fifth Grade

Physical Sciences 5-PS-3.1

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.

Supporting Content

Food provides animals with the materials they need for body repair and growth and the energy they need to maintain body warmth and for motion. The energy released from food was once energy from the sun that was captured by plants in the chemical process that forms plant matter.

Life Sciences 5-LS-2.4

Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment.

Supporting Content

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. 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.

Life Sciences 5-LS-2.2

Construct an argument with evidence for how the variations in characteristics among individuals of the same species may provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing.

Supporting Content

Populations of animals are classified by their characteristics. An example of cause and effect relationships could be animals that have better camouflage coloration than other animals may be more likely to survive and therefore more likely to leave offspring.

Life Sciences 5-LS-2.3

Make a claim about the merit of a solution to a problem caused when the environment changes and the types of plants and animals living there may change.

Supporting Content

Changes in environments affect the organisms living there. Examples of environmental changes could include changes in land characteristics, water distribution, and other organisms. When the environment changes, some organisms survive and reproduce, others move to new locations, yet others move into the transformed environment, and some die.

Sixth Grade - Middle School

Life Sciences MS-LS-1.3

Make a claim supported by evidence for how a living organism is a system of interacting subsystems composed of groups of cells.

Supporting Content

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

Life Sciences MS-LS-2.1

Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.

Supporting Content

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. Emphasis is on cause and effect relationships between resources and growth of individual organisms and the numbers of organisms in ecosystems during periods of abundant and scarce resources.

Life Sciences MS-LS-2.2

Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems.

Supporting Content

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 are shared. Emphasis is on predicting consistent patterns of interactions in different ecosystems in terms of the relationships among and between organisms.

Life Sciences MS-LS-2.3

Develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem.

Supporting Content

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. The atoms that make up the organisms in an ecosystem are cycled repeatedly between the living and nonliving parts of the ecosystem.

Life Sciences MS-LS-2.5

Construct an argument supported by evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations.

Supporting Content

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 its populations. 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.

Life Sciences MS-LS-4.4

Construct an explanation based on evidence that describes how genetic variations of traits in a population increase some individuals’ probability of surviving and reproducing in a specific environment.

Supporting Content

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 in animals, such as overproduction of offspring, passage of time, variation in a population, selection of favorable traits, and heritability of traits.

Life Sciences MS-LS-2.6

Design and evaluate solutions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Supporting Content

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

Earth and Space Sciences MS-ESS-3.3

Apply scientific practices to design a method for monitoring human activity and increasing beneficial human influences on the environment.

Supporting Content

Examples of human impacts can include water usage, land usage, and pollution. Examples of the design process include examining human environmental impacts, assessing the kinds of solutions that are feasible, and designing and evaluating solutions that could reduce that impact.