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Explain that although characteristics of plants and animals are inherited, some characteristics can be affected by the environment.
Standard #: SC.4.L.16.2
Standard Information
General Information
Subject Area: Science
Grade: 4
Body of Knowledge: Life Science
Big Idea: Heredity and Reproduction - A. Offspring of plants and animals are similar to, but not exactly like, their parents or each other.

B. Life cycles vary among organisms, but reproduction is a major stage in the life cycle of all organisms.
Date Adopted or Revised: 02/08
Content Complexity Rating: Level 3: Strategic Thinking & Complex Reasoning - More Information
Date of Last Rating: 05/08
Status: State Board Approved
Assessed: Yes
Related Courses
Related Access Points
Related Resources
Educational Software / Tool
  • What Is It Like Where You Live? # This site offers an abundance of information on Earth's biomes (rainforest, tundra, taiga, desert, temperate, and grasslands), as well as marine and freshwater ecosystems. The site features relevant facts, pictures, maps, indigenous plants and animals, additional links, and much more.

    This resource is a wonderful reference, not a lesson plan. Teachers will need to provide an objective and structure for student interaction with the website.
Lesson Plans
  • A Whale's Tale #    This lesson covers:
    • The natural history, biology, and ecology of humpback whales
    • The internal and external anatomy of humpback whales
    • Threats to humpback whales and how scientists work to protect them
  • Glow Kitty, Glow! # This lesson studies the emerging science of using glow technology (phosphorescence and fluorescence) to improve the well-being of living things. Students will be introduced to the Glow Kitten and other animals that are naturally bioluminescent or have been modified by human impact. Then students will take part in their own investigation and create a glowing carnation while considering ways this technology can be used in their own lives. Along the way, students will research books, articles, and websites and use journal entries to record their learning. Finally, students will create their own advertisement highlighting their glowing carnation and its amazing uses!
  • Pollinators # In this Model Eliciting Activity (MEA), students will be gien an engineering problem in which they must work as a team to design a procedure to select the best pollinator for certain situations.
    Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought processes. MEAs follow a problem-based, student-centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEAs visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx
Original Student Tutorials
  • Animal Traits # Explore animal traits and how they gain them as you complete this interactive tutorial.
  • Plant Traits # Explore how traits of plants are affected by parents and the outside world in this interactive tutorial.
Teaching Ideas
  • What's for Dinner? SeaWorld Classroom Activity # In this activity, the students will gain an understanding of animal interaction and the role of camouflage in the dynamics of an ecosystem.
  • Bird Beaks # This lesson focuses on bird beaks, exploring the relationship between a bird's beak and its ability to find food and survive in a given environment.
  • Specialized Structures and Environments # This investigation will show students specialization in species as it applies to heredity and adaptation of species to their given environment.
Unit/Lesson Sequence
  • Plants Parts and Life Cycles # In this unit, students learn about various plants, their parts, their life cycles, and the importance of bees in plant reproduction.
Video/Audio/Animation
  • Soybean growth rate response to touch # A time-lapse video showing differential growth rates for touch-treated seedlings and control seedlings. This would be appropriate for lessons about plant growth responses to environmental stress and graphing growth rate. Plants were grown in a vermiculite soilless medium with calcium-enhanced water. No other minerals or nutrients were used. Plants were grown in a dark room with specially-filtered green light. The plants did not grow by cellular reproduction but only by expansion of existing cells in the hypocotyl region below the 'hook'.
    Video contains three plants in total. The first two plants to emerge from the vermiculite medium are the control (right) and treatment (left) plants. A third plant emerges in front of these two but is removed at the time of treatment and is not relevant except to help indicate when treatment was applied (watch for when it disappears). When that plant disappears, the slowed growth rate of the treatment plant is apparent.
    Treatment included a gentle flexing of the hypocotyl region of the treatment seedling for approximately 5 seconds. A rubber glove was used at this time to avoid an contamination of the plant tissue.
    Some video players allow users to 'scrub' the playback back and forth. This would help teachers or students isolate particular times (as indicated by the watch) and particular measurements (as indicated by the cm scale). A graph could be constructed by first creating a data table and then plotting the data points from the table. Multiple measurements from the video could be taken to create an accurate graph of the plants' growth rates (treatment vs control).
    Instructions for graphing usage:
    The scale in the video is in centimeters (one cm increments). Students could observe the initial time on the watch in the video and use that observation to represent time (t) = 0. For that value, a mark could be made to indicate the height of the seedlings. As they advance and pause the video repeatedly, the students would mark the time (+2.5 hours for example) and mark the related seedling heights. It is not necessary to advance the video at any regular interval but is necessary to mark the time and related heights as accurately as possible. Students may use different time values and would thus have different data sets but should find that their graphs are very similar. (Good opportunity to collect data from real research and create their own data sets) It is advised that the students collect multiple data points around the time where the seedling growth slows in response to touch to more accurately collect information around that growth rate slowing event. The resulting graph should have an initial growth rate slope, a flatter slope after stress treatment, and a return to approximately the same slope as seen pre-treatment. More data points should yield a more thorough view of this. This would be a good point to discuss. Students can use some of their data points to calculate approximate pre-treatment, immediate post-treatment, and late post-treatment slopes for both the control and treatment seedlings.
    This video was created by the submitter and is original content.
    Full screen playback should be an option for most video players. Video quality may appear degraded with a larger image but this may aid viewing the watch and scale for data collection.
WebQuest
STEM Lessons - Model Eliciting Activity
  • Pollinators # In this Model Eliciting Activity (MEA), students will be gien an engineering problem in which they must work as a team to design a procedure to select the best pollinator for certain situations.
    Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought processes. MEAs follow a problem-based, student-centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEAs visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx
Original Student Tutorials Science - Grades K-8
  • Animal Traits # Explore animal traits and how they gain them as you complete this interactive tutorial.
  • Plant Traits # Explore how traits of plants are affected by parents and the outside world in this interactive tutorial.
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