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Grade 4. In 15 lessons, students explain phenomena and solve a problem related to animals using their senses and communicating. This module includes a teacher guide, 10 student activity guides, 16 Smithsonian Science Stories student readers, and enough materials for 32 students to use 1 time.

Grade 4. Module Highlights: During the module's 15 lessons, students explain phenomena and solve a problem related to animals using their senses and communicating.

This module includes a teacher guide, 10 student activity guides, 16 Smithsonian Science Stories student readers, and enough materials for 32 students to use 1 time.

Student Readers Available HERE

Alignment to the Next Generation Science Standards*
Performance Expectations

• 4-LS1-1: Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction.
• 4-LS1-2: Use a model to describe that animals receive different types of information through their senses, process the information in their brain, and respond to the information in different ways.
• 4-PS4-2: Develop a model to describe that light reflecting from objects and entering the eye allows objects to be seen.
• 4-PS4-3: Generate and compare multiple solutions that use patterns to transfer information.
• 3-5-EST1-1: Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.

• Plants and animals have both internal and external structures that serve various functions in growth, survival, behavior, and reproduction.

• Different sense receptors are specialized for particular kinds of information, which may be then processed by the animal’s brain. Animals are able to use their perceptions and memories to guide their actions.

• An object can be seen when light reflected from its surface enters the eyes.

• Digitized information can be transmitted over long distances without significant degradation. High-tech devices, such as computers or cell phones, can receive and decode information—convert it from digitized form to voice—and vice versa.

• Possible solutions to a problem are limited by available materials and resources (constraints). The success of a designed solution is determined by considering the desired features of a solution (criteria). Different proposals for solutions can be compared on the basis of how well each one meets the specified criteria for success or how well each takes the constraints into account.

• Tests are often designed to identify failure points or difficulties, which suggest the elements of the design that need to be improved.

Focal Science and Engineering Practices

• Developing and using models
• Engaging in argument from evidence

Focal Crosscutting Concepts

• Patterns
• Systems and system models

Phenomena and Problems Storyline
Lesson Summaries
Lesson 1: A Game of Cat and Mouse
Students conduct an investigation that allows them to see an object hidden in a box by manipulating variables. They find they cannot see the object without a light source and that the light must be able to reflect off the object to their eyes. Students develop and use models to describe how light reflects off the surface of various objects in the video to make them visible to the cat.
Lesson 2: The Eyes Have It
Students read about animal eye structures and sort them to identify a pattern that reveals a relationship between animals' internal and external eye structures and whether they are active at night or during the day.
Lesson 3: Strange Senses
Students investigate cat hearing, whiskers, and smell, and record observations as data. Students construct an argument that describes the senses the cat relied on when hunting the mouse, based on the cat's sensory structures and behaviors.
Lesson 4: Songbird Sustenance
Students use different methods to observe three closed paper bags and predict if they would like to eat what is in each bag. Students develop a model to show how they used sensory information and memories to guide their own decisions.
Lesson 5: Live and Learn
Students apply what they learned about themselves to the songbirds. Students develop a model to show how both hand-raised and wild songbirds' brains use information from sight receptors combined with memories to predict if firebugs are edible.
Lesson 6: Doing the Wave
Students observe some fiddler crabs waving their large claw. Students obtain information from a text on a variety of examples of animal communication. They use those examples to develop initial claims explaining why the male fiddler crabs wave a claw.
Lesson 7: Why Wave?
Students develop testable questions that could be used to investigate the claims they developed in Lesson 6.
Lesson 8: Crabby Communication
Students carry out investigations and make observations of how frequently a male fiddler crab waves when a female fiddler crab is present and when the male fiddler crab is alone. Students use the findings from both their investigation and a field study by another scientist to construct revised arguments supported by evidence to explain why the male fiddler crab waves its claw.
Lesson 9: Save the Trees
Students observe images and sounds of the rainforest and chain saws. Students develop an initial solution to the problem.
Lesson 10: Digital Sound
Students analyze digital sounds recorded from the rainforest in order to identify differences between digital rainforest sounds with and without chain saws.
Lesson 11: What's the Code?
Students develop a binary code that the sound-recording devices can use to communicate the presence and location of chain saws in the rainforest.
Lesson 12: Rainforest Protectors
Students test their solutions to identify failure points in their systems. They draw a diagram to convey their solution and analyze how well it meets the criteria and constraints.
Science Challenge
Lesson 13: Firefly Flashes, Part 1
Students obtain information from a story in order to describe the components and interactions of the firefly communication system.
Lesson 14: Firefly Flashes, Part 2
Students sort firefly flash patterns based on similarities and differences to predict the importance of distinct flash patterns to find a mate.
Lesson 15: Firefly Flashes, Part 3
Students physically model the firefly communication system and use data from the model to support an argument about the importance of distinct flash patterns.

*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.