Add to List

Grade 1. In 10 lessons over 13 class sessions, students explore similarities and differences between young and adult plants and animals and how behavior and external parts help living things survive. Module includes a teacher guide, 16 Smithsonian Science Stories student readers, and enough materials for 32 students to use 1 time.

Grade 1. Module Highlights: In 10 lessons over 13 class sessions, students explore similarities and differences between young and adult plants and animals and how behavior and external parts help living things survive. Students begin by completing a card sort activity in which they use patterns of similarities and differences among living things as evidence for their sorting. Next, students observe plants and animals to determine the patterns of similarities and differences between young and adult individuals within a species. Their evidence supports the idea that young and adult plants and animals are similar but not exactly alike. Then students engage in argument from evidence about the similarities and differences among different species of animals. Students construct an explanation about how to tell apart species of animals. Next, students obtain information about how animal behavior helps offspring survive. They apply this information in a digital simulation of parents and offspring. Students read about how the structure of external parts of plants and animals helps living things survive. They design a device that mimics the structure of a plant or animal in order to solve a simple problem. In the end-of-module science challenge, students play a card game in which they act as plants and animals trying to survive various scenarios. They communicate their choices from the game in a comic strip format.

This module includes a teacher guide, 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

• 1-LS1-1: Use materials to design a solution to a human problem by mimicking how plants and/or animals use their external parts to help them survive, grow, and meet their needs.
• 1-LS1-2: Read texts and use media to determine patterns in behavior of parents and offspring that help offspring survive.
• 1-LS3-1: Make observations to construct an evidence-based account that young plants and animals are like, but not exactly like, their parents.
• K-2-ETS1-1: Ask questions, make observations, and gather information about a situation people want to change to define a simple problem that can be solved through the development of a new or improved object or tool.

• All organisms have external parts. Different animals use their body parts in different ways to see, hear, grasp objects, protect themselves, move from place to place, and seek, find, and take in food, water and air. Plants also have different parts (roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits) that help them survive and grow.

• Adult plants and animals can have young. In many kinds of animals, parents and the offspring themselves engage in behaviors that help the offspring to survive.

• Animals have body parts that capture and convey different kinds of information needed for growth and survival. Animals respond to these inputs with behaviors that help them survive. Plants also respond to some external inputs.

• Young animals are very much, but not exactly like, their parents. Plants also are very much, but not exactly, like their parents.

• Individuals of the same kind of plant or animal are recognizable as similar but can also vary in many ways.

• A situation that people want to change or create can be approached as a problem to be solved through engineering.
• Before beginning to design a solution, it is important to clearly understand the problem.

• Asking questions and defining problems
• Constructing explanations and designing solutions
• Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

• Developing and using models
• Planning and carrying out investigations
• Analyzing and interpreting data
• Using mathematics and computational thinking
• Engaging in argument from evidence

• Patterns
• Structure and function

• Cause and effect

Concepts and Practices Storyline
Lesson Summaries
Lesson 1: What Am I?
Living things can be categorized using patterns of similarities and differences.
Students analyze and interpret data about the patterns of similarities and differences among living things to construct an explanation for a card sort.
Lesson 2: Like Parent, Like Offspring
Young and adult plants look very similar but are not exactly the same.
Students carry out an investigation to determine the patterns of similarities and differences between young and adult plants.
Lesson 3: Cubs and Chicks
Young and adult animals look very similar but are not exactly the same.
Students carry out an investigation to determine the patterns of similarities and differences between young and adult animals.
Lesson 4: One of These Things Is Not Like the Other
Individuals within a species have variation but are recognizable as that species.
Students analyze and interpret data and engage in argument from evidence about the patterns of similarities and differences within and among species.
Lesson 5: Staying Alive
Parents and offspring behave in ways that help offspring survive.
Students obtain and communicate information about how patterns of behavior help offspring survive.
Lesson 6: Penguin Protection
Animal behavior has predictable effects.
Students obtain information from a digital simulation about patterns of penguin behavior.
Lesson 7: Use What You’ve Got
External body parts of plants and animals help them survive.
Students obtain and communicate information about how the structure and function of external parts helps plants and animals survive.
Lesson 8: Mimic and Make
People can design solutions that mimic plants and animals to solve problems.
Students define problems and then design solutions that mimic the structure and function of plants and animals.
Science Challenge
Lesson 9: Survive, Behave, and Save! Part 1
Animal behavior and external body parts help plants and animals survive.
Students engage in argument from evidence and construct an explanation of how patterns of behavior and the structure and function of plants and animals can help living things survive.
Lesson 10: Survive, Behave, and Save! Part 2
Animal behavior and external body parts help plants and animals survive.
Students communicate how patterns of behavior and the structure and function of plants and animals can help living things survive.

*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.