Big Idea 14: Organization and Development of Living Organisms

This resource provides two picture examples of a strategy for using a specific graphic organizer to help students learn the parts of a plant. This strategy can be used by students to represent a variety of concepts across subject areas.

Type: Image/Photograph

Students will practice thinking about being responsible citizens in their school community. They will discuss the appropriate ways to interact with living and nonliving things and then demonstrate their understanding by acting as responsible citizens during a guided activity in this integrated lesson plan.

Type: Lesson Plan

Everglades Animal Hunt is lesson 1 of a 3 lesson unit. Students will learn that animals communicate through their senses. The students will use their knowledge and imagination to vocally and/or physically imitate wildlife of the Everglades.

Type: Lesson Plan

One way to learn about tree growth is to look at annual rings. Tree rings show patterns of change in the tree's life as well as changes in the area where it grows. In this activity, students will trace environmental and historical changes using a cross section of a tree, or "tree cookie."

Type: Lesson Plan

By making a tree costume, your students will gain an awareness of a tree's structure and functions.

Type: Lesson Plan

This STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) lesson has been designed around a Model-Eliciting Activity.

The Flower Power MEA provides students with an real world problem in which they must work as a team to design a plan to select the best flower arrangement for a special event. The resource was primarily designed as an MEA so the time and teacher instructions are based on the MEA format. The additional activities will take several hours of instruction but include watching and discussing a video about the parts of plants, reading a book, and discussing the art in the book as well as additional art by the book author/illustrator.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

The Effects of Pollution: What are the effects that pollution has on living things? Students will learn that pollution is anything that makes air, land, or water dirty. They will become aware that human activities have a big impact on other living things in a number of different ecosystems.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Feeling the Fall is a lesson that incorporates fluency, the five senses, and writing all in one. Students will work cooperatively to perform a play on fall, practicing fluency, accuracy, and expression. Then students will explore the fall season using their senses, integrating science standards into academic standards reading. Finally, students will have the opportunity to write about the fall season and publish their writing using technology.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students observe and write about the life cycle of a caterpillar. A K-W-L chart is utilized to begin discussion, as well as Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson provides students with opportunities to investigate the habitats of local plants and animals and explore some of the ways animals depend on plants and each other.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students learn about the characteristics that distinguish living things from nonliving things. By examining video clips and still photographs of a variety of objects and organisms, students gather evidence and develop criteria to decide if something is living or nonliving.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will be introduced to the study of plants in this lesson. First they will sprout bean seeds on moistened paper towels, then make drawings and measurements of their growth. They will watch time-lapse videos that illustrate a plant's major growth stages. Another clip covers fruits and asks students to consider how their seeds are spread. They will gather seeds by walking outside with an old sock over one of their shoes, then plant their sock to observe the resulting plants.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson exposes children to a range of animals and guides them through observation of animal similarities, differences, and environmental adaptations.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson the teacher will read aloud Marc Learns to Fly by Alma Sanchez, and use an animated informational video to help students understand the life cycle of a butterfly. Students will use both a response to reading and a cloze activity to learn new vocabulary and demonstrate understanding.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will imagine being among Juan Ponce de León’s crew when they first landed on the coast of modern-day Florida in this science and civics integrated lesson plan. They will conduct their own expedition to explore a location on campus to observe living things. In the process, students will learn about the first European exploration and naming of the state of Florida as well as the annual celebration that commemorates it on Pascua Florida Day.

Type: Lesson Plan

Use your imagination to experience what it may have been like to be a member of Ponce de Leon's crew as they arrived on the shores of Florida for the first time.  Make observations and discover the origin of Florida's name in this video.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Learn to differentiate between living and nonliving things and their characteristics in this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Make observations of the plants, animals and environment in the waters of Australia's Kangaroo Island.

This interactive tutorial is part 3 of 3. Click below to explore other habitats on Kangaroo Island.

• Part 2: The Woodlands

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Make observations of the plants, animals and overall environment in the woodlands of Australia's Kangaroo Island.

This interactive tutorial is part 1 of 3. Click below to explore other habitats on Kangaroo Island.

• Part 3: The Waters

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Make observations of the plants, animals and environment along the coastline of Australia's Kangaroo Island.

This interactive tutorial is part 1 of 3. Click below to explore other habitats on Kangaroo Island.

• Part 3: The Waters

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Look at a plant and what each part does as you complete this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Biology lesson plans for a Living Things Unit of study.

Type: Resource Collection

This teaching idea describes a project called Fruit and Vegetable Mystery, which is a set of note cards created by first grade students. The cards include a written description of a fruit or vegetable on one side and the name and illustration of the corresponding fruit or vegetable on the other. The cards were created as a final product for an expedition on plants and soil.

Type: Teaching Idea

This teaching idea describes a project completed by students in Colorado after studying birds. Students wrote and illustrated informational texts that included information on the physical characteristics of a bird found in Colorado. The same teaching idea can be used with birds from any state.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students gain an understanding of sharks' rough, textured skin through artwork. They demonstrate knowledge of a shark's ecosystem. Students will also have the opportunity to measure/estimate different sharks using objects and rulers.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will demonstrate how changes in an environment can affect the survival of an animal.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will be able to name warm- and cold-blooded animals through role play and song and demonstrate the behaviors used to dissipate excess body heat.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will use hand-eye coordination and large muscle skills as they reinforce positive action choices that help endangered wildlife and habitats.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will be able to demonstrate that all penguins live south of the equator and relate where various species of penguins live.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will identify bird body parts and adaptations (feathers, wings, bill, tail) while creating paper finger puppets.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will be able to name whale body parts (flipper, flukes, fins) and describe the function of each. In addition, they will role-play whale behavior.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, the students will be able to demonstrate how cryptic coloration helps ocean animals survive.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, the students will use a modeling compound to make fish-shaped refrigerator magnets. They will use observation skills to learn about different fish body types and replicate them with the modeling compound.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students explore how schooling behavior is an adaptation for avoiding predators.

Type: Teaching Idea

The students will think about what is alive. They will practice how scientists observe and record. Going outside they will record in their journal the things they observe under the heading they think it belongs in-living or nonliving.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will keep a daily journal, recording facts about penguins.

Type: Teaching Idea

Students discuss living and nonliving organisms, including plants and animals.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will identify four reasons why manatees are endangered.

Type: Teaching Idea

Observe animal habits and habitats using one of the many webcams broadcasting from zoos and aquariums around the United States and the world in this inquiry-based activity that focuses on observation logs, class discussion, questioning, and research.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this inquiry-based worms lesson, students will compare and contrast red worms and earthworms through exploration (magnifying glasses provided) and a read-aloud.

Type: Teaching Idea

Younger students can learn about plant biology. Topics include characteristics of living things, germination and growth, the basic parts of plants, photosynthesis, reproduction, and ecological adaptations of plants. The information presented can also be ordered as a video.

Type: Text Resource

In this unit, teachers allow students to explain how they know something is living and to identify the needs of living things.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

This video segment samples the diversity of feeding habits among some of the world's creatures. Different animals eat different things through different mechanisms.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation