20-question multiple choice unit assessment with one short answer question.  Covers the rock cycle/types, classification, plate tectonics and Earth's layers.  **Please be sure to make a copy of the Google Doc prior to using.  **

20-question multiple choice unit assessment with one short answer question.  Covers the rock cycle/types, classification, plate tectonics and Earth's layers.  **Please be sure to make a copy of the Google Doc prior to using.  **

Students synthesize their understanding of adaptations by playing a “go fish” style game to collect sets of organisms with physical and behavioral adaptations.

Educators Guide for this unit:
http://education.eol.org/lesson_plans/2-5_Adaptations_LessonOverview.pdf

Lessons in this unit:

Adaptations Activity 1: Adapting to the Environment
Adaptations Activity 2: Physical Adaptations
Adaptations Activity 3: Behavioral Adaptations
Adaptations Activity 4: Go Adapt!
Adaptations Activity 5: Create a Creature

Students are introduced to the classification of animals and animal interactions. Students also learn why engineers need to know about animals and how they use that knowledge to design technologies that help other animals and/or humans. This lesson is part of a series of six lessons in which students use their growing understanding of various environments and the engineering design process, to design and create their own model biodome ecosystems.

This activity is an introduction to the study of birds. Students will gain observation and classification skills.

Two-day 5E lesson plan covering the basics of the dichotomous key using different types of candy.  The lesson begins with a whole group activity and then moves into student exploration using a key to identify "mystery candy."  On the second day, students create their own dichotomous key to help students identify random buttons.

This activity is a classroom lab where students observe and classify chemical and physical changes using the five characteristics of a chemical change, interpret their findings, and use evidence to support their findings.

Students learn that ordinary citizens, including students like themselves, can make meaningful contributions to science through the concept of "citizen science." First, students learn some examples of ongoing citizen science projects that are common around the world, such as medical research, medication testing and donating idle computer time to perform scientific calculations. Then they explore Zooniverse, an interactive website that shows how research in areas from marine biology to astronomy leverage the power of the Internet to use the assistance of non-scientists to classify large amounts of data that is unclassifiable by machines for various reasons. To conclude, student groups act as engineering teams to brainstorm projects ideas for their own town that could benefit from community help, then design conceptual interactive websites that could organize and support the projects.

Students will participate in a 5E lesson on classification. To ENGAGE, students will think about common vs scientific names and interpret relatedness between four species. To EXPLORE, students will watch a clip of their choice from Our Planet and document organisms' defining characteristics. Students create a hierarchy to predict the relatedness of the species. To then learn about classification systems, students will participate in the EXPLAIN activities. Three videos and guided notes are available for students to document their learning. An EVALUATIVE formative assignment Candy Cladogram Drag and Drop is available for students to practice their understanding of phylogenetics. Then, students will ELABORATE on their knowledge by researching the scientific names of the organisms they observed in the Our Planet clip (explore section). Students will evaluate the accuracy of their orginial hierarchy and explain how scientific developments have impacted classification. Additional cladograms are included for students to interpret.

Students explore the importance and process of classification. Students apply the concept of biological classification to a real hierarchy of birds, analyzing bird photos and organizing them into groups based on physical characteristics.

Students use EOL Species Cards to sort and make observations of animals, then use the RAFT writing strategy to create short presentations about the characteristics of each major group of animals.

After learning about and observing the differences between flowering and nonflowering plants, students go outside and search for plants in schoolyard, keeping notes and drawings of their observations.

Students apply their understanding of physical characteristics and biological classification of different organisms through a game of classification "Go Fish!"

The topic of this video module is how to classify animals based on how closely related they are. The main learning objective is that students will learn how to make phylogenetic trees based on both physical characteristics and on DNA sequence. Students will also learn why the objective and quantitative nature of DNA sequencing is preferable when it come to classifying animals based on how closely related they are. Knowledge prerequisites to this lesson include that students have some understanding of what DNA is and that they have a familiarity with the base-pairing rules and with writing a DNA sequence.

In this activity students will observe and investigate rocks in order to classify them in terms of color, shape, texture and size.

This activity is a field investigation where students gather leaves from various trees on school property, interpret findings, name tree and leaves, journal activity and develop a new "aha" for nature!

In this Earth Science activity, students will investigate rocks in an outdoor field trip. Students will be divided into groups and given a Ziploc bag to collect rocks. We will then return to the classroom, and the students will put their rocks into different groups. The different groups could be the size, shape, color, and texture of the rocks. We will then talk about the Rock Cycle and the three main types of rocks. Students will record their observations in their science journals.

This article describes some common misconceptions that elementary students may have about plants. It also includes suggestions for formative assessment and teaching for conceptual change.

This article discusses misconceptions about birds (and penguins in particular). It provides tools for formative assessment and ideas for teaching correct scientific concepts.

This student research and planning sheet will help you keep students on task during their research and creation of a kingdom superhero or super-villain inspired by the teach engineering lesson plan linked in this resource.