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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.

Type: Educational Software / Tool

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will play an interactive game depicting the interactions in a habitat and the problems that occur with exotic species introduction.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will become Florida panthers, white tailed deer, and motor vehicles in an active, tag-like game to simulate the disappearance of Everglades habitat.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students are presented with this scenario: A horrible forest fire has come through an ecosystem near you! Students will need to provide a detailed news article explaining the effect that this fire had on the food chain and how local citizens can help to restore the ecosystem. In addition to providing steps to rebuild, they must also convince readers that steps need to be taken in advance to prepare ecosystems for similar disasters.

Type: Lesson Plan

This unit begins by classifying animals into major groups (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, vertebrates and those having live births and those which lay eggs) according to their physical characteristics and behaviors.

Students will review the path of the flow of energy from the Sun as it is transferred along the food chain through the producers to the consumers, and recognize ways plants and animals, including humans, can impact the environment.

Students will compare and contrast adaptations of animals and plants that enable them to survive.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students use mathematical practices to recommend food packages for the Wildlife Refuge of North America to order.

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

Learn about the effects of a changing climate on the Arctic ecosystem and four of its well-known mammals: the polar bear, the walrus, the Arctic fox and the beluga whale.

Type: Lesson Plan

This MEA presents a non-profit group that helps start schools gardens. This client is looking to switch to a tomato seed that is adapted to increased moisture in the soil due to precipitation and is versatile and great tasting. The engineering team will examine the seeds presented and develop a procedural method to rank the seeds based on the client's needs. The engineering team will reach a decision as to the best choice of seed for the client.

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

Students in this MEA will team up to select an endangered animal to relocate.

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

In this lesson, students will apply their knowledge of plant and animal adaptations to create an opinion writing piece. Students will write to convince a fictional nature show producer to film plants and animals in a habitat of the student’s choosing. Students will be assessed on elements of persuasive writing including: strong introduction/conclusion, logical sequencing, strong word choice, and supporting evidence.

Type: Lesson Plan

This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help fifth grade students apply the concept of how changes in an ecosystem can affect the survival of an animal species. Some suggested background building lessons are included, but it is not intended as an initial introduction to this benchmark.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students act as predators searching for prey (beans) in two different settings to demonstrate the processes of adaptation and selection. They track and graph their data, then compare the results of the prey eaten in the different environments and develop explanations based on their data in a class discussion.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will observe and conduct an experiment to see whether differences in salinity (the environment) have an affect on the hatching rate and survival of brine shrimp.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a five day lesson integrating Science, Reading and Writing. It is developed on a Reading lesson plan format using Shared Reading, Core Reading, Guided Reading and centers but can easily be transferred on to a Science 5E lesson format. The versatility of the lesson and the integration between subjects lends itself to it being widely used among teachers for different reasons; whether the teacher's need be in Science, Reading or Writing the lesson provides opportunities for all areas to be addressed. Most importantly, it offers the busy teacher an opportunity to implement one lesson to cover three subjects.

Type: Lesson Plan

This resource kit provides teachers engaged in lesson study with exemplary content background, unit and lesson plans, assessment items and tasks, and informational texts, related to the teaching and learning of diversity and evolution in grades 3-5. Complete with links to activities and lessons as well guiding questions, this resource kit contains all of the materials that a team would need to construct a unit of instruction that fully aligns to the NGSSS for science, while supporting the informational text component of the Florida Standards for English language arts.

Type: Lesson Study Resource Kit

Identify the results of environmental changes on different types of plants as you gain a deeper understanding of how environmental changes allow some organisms to survive and reproduce, while others die, in this interactive tutorial. 

This is part 3 in a 3-part series. Click below to explore the other tutorials in the series. 

• Environmental Changes: Part 1
• Environmental Changes: Part 2

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Explore the different ways plants respond to changes in the environment in this interactive tutorial.

This is part 2 of 3. Click below to open the other tutorials in this series.

• Environmental Changes: Part 1
• Environmental Changes: Part 3

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Learn what an environment is, how different environments meet the needs of animals that live there, and how environmental changes can impact the animals that live there with this interactive tutorial.

This is part 1 in a 3-part series. Click below to explore the other tutorials in the series. 

• Environmental Changes: Part 2
• Environmental Changes: Part 3

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Come along and explore the amazing adaptations of freshwater life in this interactive tutorial

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Come along and explore how lands animals are adapted to changing environments all around the globe in this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Come along and explore amazing adaptations of marine animals with a biologist as your guide in this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Join a biologist to explore amazing adaptations among plants in this interactive student tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Students will research protected plants and animals that live in their state and create a presentation about that species to share with others.

Type: Teaching Idea

Students will create a protected environment that will meet all of a manatee's needs, thereby encouraging breeding.

Type: Teaching Idea

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.

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

In this activity, students examine some of the behaviors and physical characteristics that enable organisms to live successfully in their environment.

Type: Teaching Idea

As a result of this activity, students will be able to understand the interconnectedness of organisms and their environment. Additionally, they will obtain a simple understanding of how graphs are used to follow and determine scientific trends.

Type: Teaching Idea

This resource is a simulation game where students represent plants and animals living in a forest habitat. Sitting in a circle, they connect themselves using string to represent the ways they depend on each other. As they make connections, the string forms a web of life. They will also learn what occurs when an invasive species enters their environment.

Type: Teaching Idea