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  • Today's Lessons
    • ELA
    • Math
    • Science and Social Studies
  • Reading
    • Research
    • SELF-REGULATION LESSONS
    • ELECTRONICS EXPECTATIONS
  • Learning At Home Resources
    • art
  • LANGUAGE SUPPORTS
    • summarizing
    • Topic Sentence
    • Elaborate
    • Claim
    • Evidence Then Reasoning
    • Reasoning Then Evidence
    • Counter and Defend
    • Sequence
    • Cause & Effect: Compounding Linking Words
    • Comparison
  • Resources
    • Life Skills >
      • Breathing Tool
      • Listening Tool
      • Empathy Tool
      • Space Tool
      • Life Skills: Safe Place Tool
    • Active Participation
    • Bloomz
    • Class Slideshows
    • Home Work
    • Self Evaluation Ideas
    • Davids Semi-Secret Videos on Morality
    • Probability Meter
    • Rubric: Quality
    • Rubric: Mastery
    • Reflections
    • Read Alouds, Book Groups, and Documentary Film List
    • Class Photos and Videos
    • Civil Rights
    • artifacts
    • Contact
  • Life Skills
    • Self Circles
    • 4th Grade Life Skills Part 1
    • 4th Grade Life Skills Part 2
    • 4th Grade Life Skills Part 3
    • 4th Grade Life Skills Part 4
    • 4th Grade Life Skills Part 5
    • What does it take to learn something?
    • Ethics
    • A Note on Electronics
    • Focus on the Solution, Not the Problem
    • 3 Ways to Be
    • Making Peace With Mistakes
    • You Get Time
    • Your Parents Have Been There
  • Listen / Speak
    • Task 1
    • Task 2
    • Task 3
    • Task 4
    • Task 5
    • Task 6
    • Task 7
    • Task 8
    • Task 9
    • Task 10
    • Assessment + Additional Videos for Practice >
      • Art
      • Science
      • Anthropology
  • Art
    • Keith Haring
    • Cloth Mache Masks
    • Art
    • Repetitive Design
    • Dimension >
      • single point perspective
    • Cityscapes
    • Organisms
    • Logo
    • Self Portraits
    • Trees
    • Graphics + Text
    • Symbols / Totems
    • Cranes
    • Sumi-E
    • Chuck Close
    • Ink Monsters
    • String Art
    • Object Integration
    • Representational Masters
    • James Rizzi
    • Lettering
    • 漢字
    • Mandalas
  • Science Resources
    • STEM Presentations
    • Curiosity and Science
    • Introduction
    • Earth's Systems
    • Energy
    • From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes
    • Earth’s Place in the Universe
    • Earth and Human Activity
    • Waves and their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer
  • Math Remodel
    • Depth of Knowledge - Math
  • Logic
  • New Page

From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes

​4-LS1-1. Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction. [Clarification Statement: Examples of structures could include thorns, stems, roots, colored petals,
 heart, stomach, lung, brain, and skin.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to macroscopic structures within plant and animal systems.]


4-LS1-2. Use a model to describe that animals receive different types of information through their senses, process the information in their brain, and respond to the information in different ways. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on systems of
 information transfer.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include the mechanisms by which the brain stores and recalls information or the mechanisms of how sensory receptors function.]
1 What is matter? What happens when it gets heated and cooled?
How much matter do we know about?
*Use scale of the universe site.
Picture
Preview Vocabulary: matter, density, heating, cooling
Video
-Show water in all 3 states in identical containers.
-What properties do you recognize?
-Generalize to other materials: What do you see around you?
-Which state is the most common on Earth? The Universe?

2 What are the 3 (4) states of matter most common on earth?
*Fred Meyer has dry ice on hand daily.
*materials: per group (gloves, tongs, large bowl, water, soap, dry ice) per class (cooler, dry ice, hammer)
-Videos for Schema
video 1
video 2
image 1
image 2
image 3
-Goal: How can you see evidence of all three states?
-CER with required vocabulary: state, solid, liquid, gas, boil, freeze, melt, condense: What happens as matter changes state?
1 (1 day) What properties does air have?
-What is air made of? Where is it? Brainstorm student ideas. Then videos for schema.
video 1
video 2
image 1
image 2
-Open ended explorations: Explain how we will ask an open ended question, do the exploration, and then write an explanation of what happened and why.
-Exploration 1: Vacuum Bag: Put a student in garbage bag holding the nozzle of a shop vac. Put the edge of the bag tight AROUND THEIR SHOULDERS. Turn on the vacuum for just a few seconds, and then turn it off and immediately open the bag at the shoulder (remember to have student cover the nozzle away from the edge - sitting criss cross with it in your legs worked last time.)
-Discuss what a labeled diagram is. List useful vocabulary and make labeled diagrams of what happened.
-Conclusions / Diagrams as a Class
-Why is some matter hard to observe?
exploration 2: Put a paper towel in a container where it is below the surface of the top opening. Tape it to the bottom. Hold upside and quickly submerge into a larger container filled with water.
-Exploration 3: Fan Moving Air
-Scale of the Universe
-Introductory Probe
-Lemonade Lab
-particles not gathered together....
-Generalize: Where else can you see matter interacting, even though you can't directly 'see' each individual unit of matter?

2. Diagram Structures and Functions
*Include Behavioral 
*Include Stimulus / Response




1 (2 Days): How do individual organisms adapt to their environment during their lifespan?
-Day 1: Introductory Slideshow: adapt, characteristic, interaction (inputs and outputs), variation, extinction
-For each set of images, ask: Which characteristics show variation? Why is there variation in characteristics? What are the inputs and outputs?  Have students record in their journal with Think Share Write.  Do numbers 1 and 2 as a class.
-Day 2: Same Questions in Pairs
1: Athletes Muscles & Build by Sport
2: Diet of Children in Different Places at School
3: Animals Gaits with Adaptive Limbs
4: Hermit Crab Shells
5: Before & After School Routines in Different Places
6: Moss Growing on Certain Side of Trees
7: College Students Studying
8: Ape Tool Use
9: Dog Breeds Over Time
10: Plants Height Over Millions of Years

2 (3 days) What is DNA?
-slides and videos: mutation, DNA, gene, express, probability, trait
-punnett squares gradual release
-day 2: punnett squares, dog DNA activity
-day 3: Introduce Testable Question: What does onion DNA look like?
-Write our prediction / hypothesis as a class: first discuss why onions (cell size) and think about DNA: What might a pure protein look like?
-procedures and materials.
-Work in pairs. Write our conclusion as a class.

3 (2 days) How do groups (species) of organisms adapt to their environment over many generations?
-Clips & Images: What is heritability? What traits are heritable? What are the chances that a heritable trait from a mutation is beneficial, harmful, or has any impact at all? -Explain how to respond to each case study: What is the heritable trait? Why is it being spread?  How long did it take? 
-Do the first 2 Case Studies of Each Type as a Class.  
-Finish Remaining in Groups on Day 2
Case 1: First Eggs Laid On Land (Extend: Plants already on land, so… and then predators follow.)
Case 2: Altruism
Case 3: Moth Color & Coal Factories
Case 4: Livestock Bodies
Case 5: Grass to Palm Trees
Case 6: Virus: Crowd Livestock Disease Jumps
Case 7: England Factory Moths
Case 8: Social Hierarchy (baboons and ants)
Case 9: Bananas
Case 10: Floppy Eared Foxes

1 (1 day) Why do most species not adapt to changes in their environment enough to survive? 
-Review: Adaption and Survival Versus Adaption and Extinction
-Show Calculations: Mutation Rate of DNA & Chances of Beneficial Mutation
-What does this have to do with a >99% extinction rate?
-Case Studies in Groups
Case Study 1: Invasive Species (Scotch Brush)
Case Study 2: Malarial Resistance
Case Study 3: Ice Age & Large Animals

1 (1 day) What methods do scientists use to study fossils?
-Review Dating Methods: C-14, M-DNA, Inferring From Soil Layer & Environment, Comparing With Kin
-Case Study 1: Mosquito Trapped in Amber
-Case Study 2: Dinosaur Footprints in Riverbed
-Case Study 3: Ocean Shore Vegetation

2 (1 day) How do we use fossil evidence to study hominid's change over time?  Which species went extinct?
-Images & Clips: Hominid Family Tree, Recent Ancestors versus Direct Line of Evolution
-Case Study 1: Skull Analysis
-Case Study 2: Ice Man
-Case Study 3: Homo (same - as us) Genus & Species (Sapian - thinking / wise)
​