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Grade 3. During the module's 15 lessons, students define, model, and test solutions to problems presented to animals when their habitats change. 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 3. Module Highlights: During the module's 15 lessons, students define, model, and test solutions to problems presented to animals when their habitats change. 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

• 3-5-ETS1-1: Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
• 3-LS2-1: Construct an argument that some animals form groups that help members survive.
• 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-LS4-3: 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
ETS1.A: Defining and Delimiting Engineering Problems

• 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.

• At whatever stage, communicating with peers about proposed solutions is an important part of the design process, and shared ideas can lead to improved designs.

• Different solutions need to be tested in order to determine which of them best solves the problem, given the criteria and the constraints.

• Populations live in a variety of habitats and change in those habitats affects the organisms living there.

• When the environment changes in ways that affect a place's physical characteristics, temperature, or availability of resources, some organisms survive and reproduce, some move to new locations, yet others move into the transformed environment, and some die.

• For any particular environment, some kinds of organisms survive well, some survive less well, and some can't survive at all.

• Being part of a group helps animals obtain food, defend themselves, and cope with changes. Groups may serve different functions and vary dramatically in size.

• Some kinds of plants and animals that once lived on Earth are no longer found anywhere.
• Fossils provide evidence about the types of organisms that lived long ago and also about the nature of their environments.

Focal Science and Engineering Practices

• Engaging in argument from evidence

Focal Crosscutting Concepts

• Cause and effect

Phenomena and Problems Storyline
Lesson Summaries
Lesson 1: Animal Survival
Students develop initial roly-poly habitat designs based on their prior knowledge. Next, students watch a video to collect evidence on what animals need to survive. Students obtain information about roly-polies to develop criteria for their habitat designs.
Lesson 2: Roly-Poly Hotel Part 1
Students draw models of habitat designs using materials provided and describe how each part meets the criteria for success. They compare their designs with peers and combine their ideas to develop improved design proposals.
Lesson 3: Roly-Poly Hotel Part 2
Students conduct a fair test investigation by changing one material in their habitat designs. They make predictions about how the change will affect roly-poly behavior. They build both designs, introduce the roly-polies to the habitats, and record observations of the roly-poly behavior.
Lesson 4: Roly-Poly Hotel Reviews
Students gather a second set of data and record where roly-polies have moved to in the test habitats. They combine data with information from the text to construct arguments for which habitat design best meets the criteria and constraints.
Lesson 5: What on Earth?
Students are introduced to a mystery specimen that is the fossil of a trilobite. They are told that the object was found in the desert. They make observations of the object and use prior knowledge to construct an initial explanation for what the object is and how it ended up in the desert.
Lesson 6: She Sorts Seashells
Students are given four new specimens found near the mystery specimen and develop claims about whether the new specimens are fossils or seashells. They identify patterns of similarities and differences between the four new specimens and seashells found recently. Students develop revised claims supported by evidence explaining that the new specimens are fossils.
Lesson 7: Fossil CSI
Students compare the fossils to modern organisms to identify a pattern of similarities or differences with marine organisms. They develop claims supported by evidence that explain the environment where the mystery specimen was found was most likely a marine environment.
Lesson 8: Sea of Change
Students investigate their claims from Lesson 7 by comparing the mystery specimen to modern marine organisms. When they cannot find the same organism living today, they gather information about the Permian extinction and use it to develop a final explanation that the mystery specimen is a trilobite left from long ago when the area it was found in was part of the ocean and that it is now extinct.
Lesson 9: Fly Together
Students use video to observe starling behavior in a large group. They obtain information about different animals in groups to identify patterns of similarities and differences in animal group behavior.
Lesson 10: Teamwork
Students obtain information about costs and benefits being in a group presents to different animals. They combine the information from the text with the information gathered in Lesson 9 to construct a claim that is supported by evidence for why the starlings might move in a group.
Lesson 11: Camera Trap
Students are introduced to the phenomenon through a field journal and develop initial explanations based on prior knowledge. Students use images from a camera trap to investigate urbanization as an explanation.
Lesson 12: Town and Country
Students analyze camera trap data in three habitats. They use a Venn diagram to organize the data and create bar graphs to analyze the relative numbers of two animals that live in all three habitats. They obtain information on each of the habitats and use it to develop explanations for the differences in the data between the three habitats.
Lesson 13: Move or Die
Students use a board game as a model to simulate population change when there are changes in a habitat's food, temperature, or amount of land development. Students combine evidence from the game and evidence gathered from Lessons 11 and 12 to construct an explanation about why Alex saw similar and different animals in the Virginia city and Florida woodland.
Design Challenge
Lesson 14: Saving Salamanders Part 1
Engineering teams identify the problem of salamanders being killed when crossing roads and the impact on their population. They obtain information from text to define criteria for successful solutions to the problem. They design a solution that meets criteria and constraints and explain how it will work as a system to help salamanders survive.
Lesson 15: Saving Salamanders Part 2
Students work in teams to build models of their salamander crossing solution and participate in a peer review of another team's model solution. They test their design model and use evidence to construct an argument about which solution better meets the solution criteria within the constraints.

*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.