Hearing

Identify and label a diagram of the ear and explain how hearing works. KidsHealth has a useful resource for labeling the ear.

Learn and practice American Sign Language in your class. There are lots of websites available to help you learn the signs. A book such as Learn to Sign the Fun Way: Let Your Fingers Do the Talking with Games, Puzzles, and Activities in American Sign Language by Penny Warner can also be a great resource.

Brainstorm all of the sounds that would be heard in a given location such as a restaurant, a forest, an airport, a park or a library. Don't forget sounds made by people physically or in conversations, by objects, and by nature. Come up with adjectives to describe those sounds.

Create different sounds that can be made with just your hands. Count how many you have found. What about different sounds made with just your feet, or just your mouth, or with a musical instrument? What if you combined your mouth and hands?

Use the following Thunderstorm Stopwatch to count and measure the distance that it takes sound to travel by measuring the thunder. Or if you are lucky enough to experience an actual storm, do it in real time.

Install a simple wave generator on your computer so that you can see the frequency and amplitude of sound waves. Compare the waves as two dimensional figures.

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.

Examples of devices could include paper cup and string "telephones" and a pattern of drumbeats. People use a variety of devices to send and receive information over long distances.

Examples of vibrating materials that make sound could include tuning forks and plucking a stretched string. Examples of how sound can make matter vibrate could include holding a piece of paper near a speaker making sound and holding an object near a vibrating tuning fork.

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.

Animals have various body structures with specific functions for sustaining life.

Examples of solutions could include drums sending coded information through sound waves. Different solutions need to be tested in order to determine which of them best solves the problem, given the criteria and the constraints.

Waves are regular patterns of motion. Waves of the same type can differ in amplitude (height of the wave) and wavelength (spacing between wave peaks.) Examples of models could include diagrams, analogies, and physical models using wire to illustrate wavelength and amplitude of waves.

Examples of devices could include electric circuits that convert electrical energy into sound. Devices should be limited to those that use stored energy to produce sound.

Energy is present whenever there is sound. When objects collide, some energy is typically also transferred to the surrounding air; as a result, sound is produced. Energy can also be transferred from place to place by electric currents, which can then be used locally to produce sound.

Populations of animals are classified by their characteristics.

A sound wave needs a medium through which it is transmitted.

A simple wave has repeating patterns with a specific wavelength, frequency, and amplitude.

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 selection of favorable traits and heritability of traits.

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.