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.W-RW1
Routinely write or dictate writing for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences (e.g., expressing a view or preference, supplying some information about the topic, stories that recount an event or tell a story).
Suggested Lesson
Group students into teams of approximately 4 or 5 kids. Assign them a forest and have them create a “tour” of that forest. Students should plan a tour guide script that points out the plants and animals that would be seen on that tour. Encourage them to include a fact or two for each item on the tour. Then the students act out the tour for their classmates. Students can play the parts of trees, bushes, animals and people.
Fourth Grade
ELA/Literacy 4.VD-WB1A
Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade-level content, choosing flexibility from a range of strategies. Use context (e.g., definitions, examples, or restatements in text) as clues to the meaning of words or phrases.
Suggested Lesson
Draw or create a model rainforest and label the layers: emergent, canopy, understory, forest floor.
Fifth Grade
ELA/Literacy 5.W-RW3
Write informational texts that introduce the topic; develop the focus with relevant facts, details, and examples from multiple sources that are logically grouped, including headings to support the purpose; and provide a concluding section.
Suggested Lesson
Select a plant or animal from any of the three types of forests. Create a PowerPoint presentation about it to share with students in a younger grade. Text, images, graphs, maps and textual information should be factual and researched.
Math
First Grade
Math 1.MD.C.4
Organize, represent, and interpret data with up to three categories; ask and answer questions about the total number of data points, how many in each category, and how many more or less are in one category than in another.
Suggested Lesson
Use tree cookies to determine ring sizes. Discuss and compare the rings. Explain that growth is based on rainfall and heat. Find the rings that show good growing years and poor growing years.
Fourth Grade
Math 4.MD.A.2
Use the four operations to solve word problems involving measurements. Include problems involving simple fractions or decimals. Include problems that require expressing measurements given in a larger unit in terms of a smaller unit. Represent measurement quantities using diagrams such as number line diagrams that feature a measurement scale.
Suggested Lesson
Write mathematical equations using data from this pie chart. Solve and label.
Fifth Grade
Math 5.MD.B.2
Collect, represent, and interpret numerical data, including whole numbers, and fractional and decimal values. Interpret numerical data, with whole-number values, represented with tables or line plots. Use graphic displays of data (line plots (dot plots), tables, etc.) to solve real-world problems using fractional data.
Suggested Lesson
Write fractional statements using data from this pie chart.
Science
Kindergarten
Life Science: 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
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. Examples of observations could include that animals need to take in food, but plants produce their own; the different kinds of food needed by different types of animals; the requirement of plants to have light; and that all living things need water.
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. They live in places that have the things they need. Examples of relationships could include that deer eat buds and leaves therefore they usually live in forested areas and grasses need sunlight so they often grow in meadows. Plants, animals, and their surroundings make up a system.
Earth and Space Sciences K-ESS-2.3
Communicate ideas that would enable humans to interact in a beneficial way with the land, water, air, and/or other living things in the local environment.
Supporting Content
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. Examples of human influence on the land could include planting trees after a burn, protecting farm fields from erosion, or keeping plastic trash out of waterways.
First Grade
Life Science: 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
Plants have different parts (roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits) that help them survive and grow. Examples of human problems that can be solved by mimicking plant solutions could include designing protective clothing by mimicking acorn shells, stabilizing structures by mimicking roots, and keeping out intruders by mimicking thorns on branches.
Second Grade
Life Science: 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 and in water. The emphasis is on the diversity of living things in each of a variety of different habitats.
Life Science: 2-LS-1.1
Plan and conduct an investigation to determine the impact of light and water on the growth of plants.
Supporting Content
Plants depend on water and light to grow.
Life Science: 2-LS-1.2
Develop a model that demonstrates how plants depend on animals for pollination or the dispersal of seeds.
Supporting Content
Some plants can depend on animals, wind, and water 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. Emphasis is on the interaction between animals and plants rather than all forms of pollination and seed dispersal.
Third Grade
Life Science: 3-LS-3.2
Use evidence to support the explanation that traits can be influenced by the environment.
Supporting Content
Many characteristics involve both inheritance and environment. The environment affects the traits that an organism develops. Examples of the environment affecting a trait could include that normally tall plants grown with insufficient water are stunted.
Earth and Space Science: 3-ESS-1.2
Obtain and combine information to describe climates in different regions of the world.
Supporting Content
Climate describes a range of an area's typical weather conditions and the extent to which those conditions vary over years.
Fifth Grade
Physical Science: 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
The energy released from food was once energy from the Sun. The energy was captured by plants in the chemical process that forms plant matter (from air and water).
Life Sciences: 5-LS-1.1
Support an argument that plants get what they need for growth chiefly from air, water, and energy from the Sun.
Supporting Content
Plants acquire their material for growth chiefly from air and water. 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). Emphasis is on the idea that plant matter comes mostly from air and water, not from the soil.
Life Science: 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 that live there may change.
Supporting Content
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. Examples of environmental changes could include changes in land characteristics, water distribution, temperature, food, and other organisms.
Earth and Space Science: 5-ESS-2.2
Obtain and combine information about ways communities protect Earth's resources and environment using scientific ideas.
Supporting Content
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.
Sixth Grade - Middle School
Life Science: MS-LS-1.5
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.
Supporting Content
Plants, algae (including phytoplankton), and many microorganisms 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.
Life Science: 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. 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. Emphasis is on describing the conservation of matter and flow of energy into and out of various ecosystems, and on defining the boundaries of the system.
Life Science: MS-LS-2.5
Construct an argument supported by empirical 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 all 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-2.6
Evaluate competing design 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. Changes in biodiversity can influence humans' resources, such as food, energy, and medicines, as well as ecosystem services that humans rely on. For example, forest ecosystem services could include oxygen production, water purification, carbon absorption, nutrient recycling, and prevention of soil erosion. Examples of design solution constraints could include scientific, economic, and social considerations. There are systematic processes for evaluating solutions with respect to how well they meet the criteria and constraints of a problem.
Earth and Space Science: 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
Human activities can positively and negatively influence the biosphere, sometimes altering natural habitats and ecosystems. (MS-ESS-3.3) Technology and engineering can potentially help us best manage natural resources as populations increase. 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).