LAFS.4.W.3.8Archived Standard

This is a 5E lesson which allows students to explore the differences between learned and inherited behaviors in animals. The lesson includes engaging videos of animals doing incredible things.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will take notes about the Everglades using a variety of resources. Students will identify appropriate text features that can be used to convey information. As a final product, students will practice their expository writing by creating an informational brochure about the Everglades that uses the description text structure and multiple text features.

Type: Lesson Plan

The Plant Package MEA provides students with an engineering problem in which they are asked to rank different plant containers using recycled materials.

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 process. 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 MEA’s visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx

Type: Lesson Plan

This is an integrated science and reading lesson. This lesson is intended as a beginning of year lesson to give students the foundation in some of the practice of science and writing standards. Students will conduct an investigation on inherited traits and use evidence from a research article and their investigation to support their findings.

Type: Lesson Plan

After dissecting a flower(s), the students will be able to identify the parts necessary for pollination, or reproduction of flowering plants. They will also make comparisons and find patterns in nature, leading them to the understanding of the processes of sexual reproduction in flowering plants, including pollination and fertilization (seed production).

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a fun science lesson that teaches children about inherited animal behaviors through observation and direct instruction. Students then use their new skills to write a news article explaining what school might be like if teachers or students had different inherited and learned behaviors. This lesson can be integrated into reading and includes an opportunity for writing across the curriculum.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is the second lesson in a fourth grade unit on classification and categorization. In the independent practice activity, students will develop a few research questions on a topic of their choice, conduct research and use text features to identify information relevant to answering each question, take notes, and then sort and organize the information they gathered into an outline. The teacher modeling activity uses the text Animals that Hibernate by Phyllis J. Perry.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is the third lesson in a fourth grade unit on classification and categorization. Students will use an outline to create a research report. The additional lessons in the unit are attached as related resources.

Type: Lesson Plan

In the independent practice activity, students will develop three research questions, conduct research and take notes to answer each question, and then classify and categorize the information they gathered into an outline form. The teacher modeling section uses the informational text Squanto's Journey by Joseph Bruchac (text not provided) and the guided practice activity uses a text titled "Creepy Cave Crawlers" (text provided with the lesson).

Type: Lesson Plan

Exploding a moment is magnifying an event much like a film maker does when he zooms in on the action using slow motion. Through the use of photographs or text illustrations, students will become familiar with identifying sensory details and use this imagery to improve their writing.

Type: Lesson Plan

Through teacher demonstrations and lab type investigations done in rotations, students will explore magnets, magnetic materials, magnetic fields, and electromagnets.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this activity, students will use resources to answer questions about a topic. They will use a graphic organizer to record their research.

Type: Student Center Activity

This teaching idea describes a project fourth graders participated in after studying American immigration. Students wrote essays about what was important to them and created expressive self-portraits.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this lesson, third grade students access prior knowledge about water pollution before exploring the topic further using read-alouds. They then complete a sequencing graphic organizer using a story of a fish and its journey from the mountains to a polluted waterway. Finally, students' understanding of cause and effect is reinforced using a hands-on experiment, art project, and graphic organizer.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence