4^th Grade Living Environment Unit Blueprint

Session I—2-3 days
Session II (Optional) —2-3 days
Terrarium Observations & Maintenance—1-2 times per week

Teacher Resources:
Tips	Light and Isopods Experiment (Microsoft® Word® document)  Light and Isopods Experiment (Adobe® Reader® PDF 168 KB)  Water and Isopods Experiment (Microsoft® Word® document)  Water and Isopods Experiment (Adobe® Reader® PDF 200 KB)  Explain Your Choice(s) (Microsoft® Word® document)  Explain Your Choice(s) (Adobe® Reader® PDF 44 KB)

How can changes to an organism's habitat affect its survival?

5D(3-5)#4: Changes in an organism's habitat are sometimes beneficial to it and sometimes harmful.

Note: The lesson does not specifically address the benchmarks. Start by focusing on students' understanding of how the experiments relate to environmental factors. Encourage students to generalize about how environmental factors can affect plants and animals.

• Do students understand how the experiment relates to environmental factors?
• Do students understand that an environmental factor may be helpful to one organism and harmful to another?
• Do students understand that a change in the environment (a change in environmental factor) can affect an organism's survival?
• Do students understand why all plants and animals can't live in the same environment?

12C(3-5)#3: Keep a notebook that describes observations made, carefully distinguishes actual observations from ideas and speculations about what was observed, and is understandable weeks or months later.

Click to view student work sample.

• Do students' written observations include factual information, not ideas or explanations?
• Do students' written observations include a description of the movement of the isopods?
• Do students' written observations include quantitative data? (Example: Three isopods sat at the wet end of the trough. One isopod moved back and forth between the wet and dry sections?)

Class discussion of histogram and general experiment results/observations from Light and Water Tests (See Step 4 on pages 150 & 151 and Step 8 on page 154 in Teacher's Guide.)

Click to view student work sample.

Brainteaser (See page 154 in Teacher's Guide. Have students justify locations selected—an "Explain Your Choice(s)" student sheet is available on the electronic curriculum under "Teacher Resources.")

• If results vary significantly among groups, do students recognize the need to discuss experiment procedures used in each group? Do students recognize the shortcomings of the experiment? Do students recognize the benefit of running more trials and/or a different experiment to resolve the differences in the observations?
• Are students able to articulate why a "fair" experiment is important?
• If experiment results are similar, are students able to identify an optimal amount of light/moisture for isopods? Do students use their data and/or class data to support their choice of optimal light/moisture levels? Are students able to use the identified intensity of light/moisture to suggest a real environment suitable for isopods?

Brainteaser

• Do students use/apply data from the Water and Temperature tests, as well as observations of the terrariums, to select reasonable locations to find isopods?
• Do students use data and terrarium observations to support chosen locations?

12D(3-5)#3: Use numerical data in describing and comparing objects and events.

1B(3-5)#3: Scientists' explanations about what happens in the world come partly from what they observe, partly from what they think. Sometimes scientists have different explanations for the same set of observations. That usually leads to making more observations to resolve the differences.