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Grade 3. Life in Ecosystems introduces students to the diversity of living organisms, a significant component of a healthy ecosystem. Lessons are structured in 30-minute class sessions so science fits easily into your day. The Life in Ecosystems 1-Use Unit Kit with Literacy Set includes teacher's guide, 30 student readers, license to access online digital resources, and enough supplies and apparatus to teach the unit once to a class of up to 30 students.

Grade 3. In 5 lessons spanning 15 class sessions, the Building Blocks of Science® 3D unit Life in Ecosystems introduces students to the diversity of living organisms, a significant component of a healthy ecosystem. Building Blocks of Science® 3D lessons are structured in 30-minute class sessions, making it easy to fit science into your day. The Life in Ecosystems 1-Use Unit Kit with Literacy Set includes a teacher's guide (item #514742), 24 on-grade student readers (item #514703), 6 below-grade student readers (item #514703BGR), a license for the teacher and students to access online digital resources, and enough supplies and apparatus to teach the unit once to a class of up to 30 students. Kit also includes a voucher for prepaid delivery of the living organisms later at your convenience.

Along with hands-on learning, this Building Blocks of Science® 3D unit also provides digital resources to enhance the classroom experience. These components offer an additional method of delivering content, particularly for classrooms with consistent access to computers or tablets. Digital components include digital teacher's guide, simulations, digital literacy reader, interactive whiteboard activities, interactive student investigation sheets, and assessment. All digital resources for Building Blocks of Science® 3D are accessible at CarolinaScienceOnline.com.

Unit Summary
Earth is a very special place and still the only planet that has been found to support life. As students travel to school, play on the playground, or participate in a school fire drill, they are observing and sharing space with a diverse group of organisms that live in the local ecosystem. We depend on organisms in our ecosystems for food, shelter, and the oxygen we breathe. In the five lessons in Life in Ecosystems, students will be introduced to life cycles, inherited and acquired traits, adaptations, and the fossil record and how all of those things impact the diversity of life on Earth. Students explore these concepts through investigation, discussion, and problem-solving. Students make observations and predictions, analyze and graph data, develop claims supported with evidence and reasoning, and evaluate problems and solutions.

Performance Expectations

• 3-LS1-1: Develop models to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycles but all have in common birth, growth, reproduction, and death.
• 3-LS2-1: Construct an argument that some animals form groups that help members survive.
• 3-LS3-1: Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence that plants and animals have traits inherited from parents and that variation of these traits exists in a group of similar organisms.
• 3-LS3-2: Use evidence to support the explanation that traits can be influenced by the environment.
• 3-LS4-1: Analyze and interpret data from fossils to provide evidence of the organisms and the environments in which they lived long ago.
• 3-LS4-2: Use evidence to construct an explanation for how the variations in characteristics among individuals of the same species may provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing.
• 3-LS4-3: Construct an argument with evidence that in a particular habitat some organisms can survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all.
• 3-LS4-4: Make a claim about the merit of a solution to a problem caused when the environment changes and the types of plants and animals that live there may change.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

• LS1.B: Growth and Development of Organisms
• LS2.D: Social Interactions and Group Behavior
• LS2.C: Ecosystem Dynamics, Functioning, and Resilience
• LS3.A: Inheritance of Traits
• LS3.B: Variation of Traits
• LS4.A: Evidence of Common Ancestry and Diversity
• LS4.B: Natural Selection
• LS4.C: Adaptation
• LS4.D: Biodiversity and Humans

Science and Engineering Practices

• Developing and Using Models
• Analyzing and Interpreting Data
• Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions
• Engaging in Argument from Evidence

Crosscutting Concepts

• Patterns
• Cause and Effect
• Scale, Proportion, and Quantity
• Systems and System Models
• Structure and Function

Common Core State Standards
Language Arts

• L.3.4: Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
• L.3.4A: Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
• L.3.4D: Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
• RF.3.3: Phonics and Word Recognition
• RI.3.1: Key Ideas and Details
• RI.3.2: Key Ideas and Details
• RI.3.3: Key Ideas and Details
• RI.3.4: Craft and Structure
• RI.3.7: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
• SL.3.1: Comprehension and Collaboration
• SL.3.2: Comprehension and Collaboration
• SL.3.3: Comprehension and Collaboration
• SL.3.4: Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas
• SL.3.6: Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas
• W.3.1: Text Types and Purposes
• W.3.2: Text Types and Purposes
• W.3.10: Range of Writing

Mathematics

• MD.A.1: Solve problems involving measurement and estimation.
• MD.A.2: Solve problems involving measurement and estimations.
• MD.B.3: Represent and interpret data.
• 3.NF.A.3.D: Develop understanding of fractions as numbers.
• MD.C.5: Geometric measurement: understand concepts of area and relate area to multiplication and to addition.
• MD.C.6: Geometric measurement: understand concepts of area and relate area to multiplication and to addition.
• MD.D.8: Geometric measurement: recognize perimeter.

Lesson Summaries
Students begin by drawing upon previous knowledge to document what they know about the components of ecosystems. They are introduced to life cycles by setting up habitats for painted lady butterflies and Wisconsin Fast Plants® and beginning unit-long observations of these organisms. Students further explore growth and development by examining some of the inherited and acquired traits that they possess and evaluating trait variations in their plants, their butterflies, and other organisms.

Students discuss behavioral and physical adaptations, and they investigate physical adaptations by comparing model bird beaks to the types of food birds can obtain. Students build on their knowledge of adaptations to describe the benefits of camouflage in predator–prey relationships, and they observe how variations in adaptations can impact an organism's survival. Students investigate the effect of the environment on the life cycles of organisms by setting up a second plant growing system and withholding one important plant need. The experimental system is compared with students' original growing systems. Students analyze how environmental changes can impact various ecosystems, and use fossil structures and data to determine how organisms and the environments they lived in change over time.

In the last lesson, students are introduced to the engineering design process. After reviewing ecosystems and life cycles, students discuss how humans depend on and impact ecosystems. Students work in groups to analyze the ways that an environmental problem could affect the plants and animals in an ecosystem. They evaluate a proposed solution and determine whether the solution helps solve the environmental problem or harms the ecosystem by introducing additional changes with negative impacts.

*Next Generation Science Standards® is a registered trademark of WestEd. Neither WestEd nor the lead states and partners that developed the Next Generation Science Standards were involved in the production of this product, and do not endorse it.