SC.2.L.17.2

 This lesson covers:

• A humpback whale’s basic needs and how they are similar to humans
• A humpback whale’s feeding habits and social behaviors
• Threats to humpback whales and how scientists work to protect them

Type: Lesson Plan

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will run a relay race imitating parent Wood Storks feeding their babies; one team during the wet season, the second team during the dry season. Students will draw connections from this relay to what happens to aquatic life as the waters in the Everglades dry.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will act out an "alligator hole ecodrama" occurring during the dry season. Each student will play a role of an animal that depends on the alligator hole.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will read a book on the importance of American alligators and listen to-or act out a play which demonstrates the dangers of feeding wild animals.

This is lesson 1 in a series of 3 lessons. Animals in southern Florida are accustomed to their natural environment. They are wild animals with the ability to exist without human intervention. It is detrimental to the American alligator for humans to feed and/or change their natural environment. In areas of southern Florida where American alligators are found, we occasionally hear about problem gators that have attacked dogs and sometimes people. In most of those cases, it is the people who fed the American alligator that are the problem. The American alligators soon begin to associate people with food. When people feed American alligators, they are actually doing it more harm than good. The American alligator no longer gets the balanced diet it would if it were getting its own food in the natural environment. Also, once the American alligator gets used to being fed by humans, it will no longer be able to find food on its own.

Type: Lesson Plan

This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help students apply the concepts of life cycles from SC.2.L.16.1 (Observe and describe major stages in the life cycles of plants and animals, including beans and butterflies), the understanding that all living things have basic needs from SC.2.L.17.1 (Compare and contrast the basic needs that all living things, including humans, have for survival), a knowledge of habitats from SC.2.L.17.2 (Recognize and explain that living things are found all over Earth, but each is only able to live in habitats that meet its basic needs) and practice working with money (MAFS.2.MD.3.8 solve word problems involving dollar bills, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, using $ and ¢ symbols appropriately) as they build and experiment with containers to meet the water needs of bean plants in all stages of their life cycle. It is not intended as an initial introduction to these concepts.

Type: Lesson Plan

This engineering design challenge is intended to help students apply the concepts of life cycles from SC.2.L.16.1 (Observe and describe major stages in the life cycles of plants and animals, including beans and butterflies), the understanding that all living things have basic needs from SC.2.L.17.1 (Compare and contrast the basic needs that all living things, including humans, have for survival), build on their knowledge of habitats, and practice working with money as they build structures to meet the needs of a tadpole. It is not intended as an initial introduction to these concepts.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will learn all about the life cycle of plants. They will work in a whole group setting while completing a K-W-L graphic organizer with the teacher and building meaning for vocabulary words relevant to the understanding of the text. They will have an opportunity to work in small groups and share the information they have learned by writing an expository paragraph.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this MEA (Model Eliciting Activity) students are being asked to prioritize four endangered species to Florida based on a given set of data. Only one species can be helped at this time and the team needs to decide which species that should be.

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

Manatees live in many places in the state of Florida. Sea World rescues injured manatees and then releases them back into the wild. Sea World needs help determining safe places to release them. The factors students need to consider will be distance from Sea World, depth of water, and the population of humans living on and using the water source.

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

This lesson integrates text features from reading into science with the study of jellyfish. Students will listen to a story, play a game and create a mock jellyfish to represent how trash often looks like jellyfish to the jellies' prey.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson demonstrates how students can compare and contrast different types of habitats. The lesson provides the opportunity for students to apply reading concepts while encountering nonfiction text. This lesson provides students with the opportunity to read and discuss various nonfiction selections about habitats and includes a jigsaw learning activity.

Type: Lesson Plan

This resource was completed on a general lesson plan template, but also includes the 5E lesson model. The lesson allows for students to use Reading, Writing, Science and some Math skills. It is an interactive lesson that includes an outdoor exploration, if you do not have the ability of taking your students outdoors you can complete the lesson by having an ant farm in the classroom available for student observations (we have an ant habitat from Steve Spangler Science that includes space aged gel allowing students to get a close up look at the ants and their tunneling).

Type: Lesson Plan

This resource kit is designed to facilitate K-2 teachers in the development of a unit of instruction that is focused on diversity, adaptation, and classification of living things. Complete with background information for teachers as well as engaging activities and lessons for students, this kit contains exemplary materials includes recommendations for informational texts that align with standards for English language arts.

Type: Lesson Study Resource Kit

Ecologist Rebecca Means discusses the use of statistical sampling and comparative studies in field biology.

Type: Perspectives Video: Professional/Enthusiast

Learn about wetlands and how they meet the needs of various inhabitants. Learn more about how to learn more at .

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Teaching Idea

Biology lesson plans for a Living Things Unit of study.

Type: Resource Collection

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 demonstrate that all penguins live south of the equator and relate where various species of penguins live.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students describe an antarctic food chain through the use of song.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, the students will use number and listening skills as they reinforce their understanding of dolphin behavior using echolocation. As the students listen to the teacher read a story about a dolphin's adventure they can either connect dots or plot points on a graph to figure out what the dolphin gets to eat at the end of the story.

Type: Teaching Idea

Given information about the natural history of a species of marine animal, students will design a zoological environment. Students may need assistance in gathering background information on their organism to design an environment. Teachers should encourage students to be creative and draw or build a model of an environment.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, the student will create a mobile for each of three locations the Arctic, Australia, and Africa. Upon completing the mobile students can research the animals to understand the different animal habitats and how the habitats meet the animals' needs.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will learn about factors that affect manatee populations.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will be able to identify three macro invertebrates that are part of the food web found in a compost pile. Students will be able to sort animals into herbivores and carnivores.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will learn how the destruction of a coral reef affects the animals that live there.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, the students will creatively portray a shark's ecosystem.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this video segment from ZOOM, a Florida girl explores the ecosystem of the warm shallow waters off the coral island on which she lives. Discussion questions and a background essay accompany this video, with closed captioning.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation