Habitat


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

Second Grade

ELA/Literacy 2.RC-TE.3

Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in grade-level texts heard or read.

Suggested Lesson

Select a habitat and form an answer to each of the question words regarding that space. Who lives there, what are the conditions in that habitat that are just right for those creatures, where can this habitat be found, when do the animals eat (hibernate, sleep, migrate, etc.), why do these animals live here and not in a different habitat, how do they hunt, communicate, create shelter, get water. Create a class poster about that habitat and allow several students to illustrate it.

Fifth Grade

ELA/Literacy 5.W-RW.5

Produce clear and coherent organizational structures of multiple paragraphs in which facts and details are logically grouped and linking words and phrases connect details and ideas.

Suggested Lesson

Watch a movie or a science program about habitats (or a specific habitat) and summarize the key points of the presentation.

Sixth Grade

ELA/Literacy 6.W.RW.4

Write personal or fictional narratives that establish a situation and narrator; engage and orient the reader to the context; use narrative techniques such as description, dialogue, pacing, concrete words and sensory details to develop the characters, event(s), or experience(s); and provide a conclusion that follows from the narrated event(s).

Suggested Lesson

Consider how one creature might view the environment of a habitat differently than another from the same habitat. Would a mountain goat see a mountain in the same way as a lizard? Or imagine how an animal from one habitat might view another habitat. How would a penguin view a desert habitat? Write a narrative from the point of view of one or more creatures. 

Math

Kindergarten

Math K.CC.A.1

Count to 100 by ones and by tens.

Suggested Lesson

The HabCam is a camera placed in the ocean to take pictures of the ocean habitat and wildlife that happens by. Take a look at some of the images and count how many different animals you can see.


First Grade

Math 1.NBT.A.1

Starting at a given number, count forward and backwards within 120 by ones. Skip count by twos to 20, by fives to 100, and by tens to 120. In this range, read and write numerals and represent a number of objects with a written numeral.

Suggested Lesson

The HabCam is a camera placed in the ocean to take pictures of the ocean habitat and wildlife that happens by. Take a look at some of the images and count how many different animals you can see.

Third Grade

Math 3.MD.A.1

Tell and write time to the nearest minute within the same hour and measure time intervals in minutes. Solve word problems involving addition and subtraction of time intervals in minutes. Students may use tools such as clocks, number line diagrams, and tables to solve problems involving time intervals.

Suggested Lesson

Survival can depend upon how quickly an animal can move. Here is a great lesson (PDF) from the National Wildlife Federation on calculating average speed.

Sixth Grade

Math 6.RP.A3c

Find a percent of a quantity as a rate per 100 (e.g., 30% of a quantity means 30/100 times the quantity); solve problems involving finding the whole, given a part and the percent.

Suggested Lesson

Humans have a habitat too. Many of us purchase homes as our habitat. Check out this set of data on Idaho’s statewide housing analysis.

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 Science: K-ESS-1.2

With guidance and support, use evidence to construct an explanation of how plants and animals interact with their environment to meet their needs.

Supporting Content

Examples of plants and animals changing their environment could include a squirrel digs in the ground to hide its food and tree roots can break concrete. 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.

Earth and Space Science: 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 Science: 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.

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. Emphasis is on the diversity of living things in each of a variety of different habitats.

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. Characteristics result from individuals’ interactions with the environment, which can range from diet to learning. 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, and a pet dog that is given too much food and little exercise may become overweight.

Fourth Grade

Earth and Space Science: 4-ESS-1.1

Identify evidence from patterns in rock formations and fossils in rock layers for changes in a landscape over time to support an explanation for changes in a landscape over time.

Supporting Content

Local, regional, and global patterns of rock formations reveal changes over time due to earth forces, such as earthquakes. The presence and location of certain fossil types indicate the order in which rock layers were formed. Examples of evidence from patterns could include rock layers with marine shell fossils above rock layers with plant fossils and no shells, indicating a change from land to water over time; and a canyon with different rock layers in the walls and a river in the bottom, indicating that over time a river cut through the rock.

Earth and Space Science: 4-ESS-3.1

Obtain and combine information to describe that energy and fuels are derived from natural resources and their uses affect the environment.

Supporting Content

Energy and fuels that are modified from natural sources affect the environment in multiple ways.  Examples of renewable energy resources could include wind energy, water behind dams, and sunlight; non-renewable energy resources are fossil fuels and atomic energy. Examples of environmental effects could include biological effects from moving parts, erosion, change of habitat, and pollution.

Fifth Grade

Life Science: 5-LS-2.1

Analyze and interpret data from fossils to provide evidence of the types of organisms and the environments that existed long ago and compare those to living organisms and their environments.

Supporting Content

Some kinds of plants and animals that once lived on Earth are no longer found anywhere. Fossils provide evidence about the types of organisms that lived long ago and also about the nature of their environments. Examples of data could include type, size, and distributions of fossil organisms. Examples of fossils and environments could include marine fossils found on dry land, tropical plant fossils found in Arctic areas, and fossils of extinct organisms.

Life Science: 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

Sometimes the differences in characteristics between individuals of the same species provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing. Examples of cause-and-effect relationships could be that plants that have larger thorns than other plants may be less likely to be eaten by predators, and animals that have better camouflage coloration than other animals may be more likely to survive and therefore more likely to leave offspring.

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 living there may change.

Supporting Content

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. Examples of environmental changes could include changes in land characteristics, water distribution, temperature, food, and other organisms.

Earth and Space Science: 5-ESS-3.1

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-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. Growth of organisms and population increases are limited by access to resources. 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. 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 Science: MS-LS-2.2

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

Supporting Content

Examples of types of interactions could include competitive, predatory, and mutually beneficial. 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.

Life Science: 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 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.

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. 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).