Grade 4
Unit 5: Tenacious Tidepools
Essential Question: How do animals survive and thrive in a tidepool?
Project Description:
In this project, students will develop understanding of the tidepool habitat and empathize with the uniquely adapted animals that call it home. Through field study and investigations, students will visit their closest tidepool environment and observe the animals that live there. They will develop models of animal external and internal structures to explain how they interact with their environment and use their super adaptations to survive and thrive. With guidance from VAPA Visual Artist, Don Masse, and San Diego Comic Artist, Danny Beckwith, students will transform their learning through art by using comics to encourage community action. Students will create a super tidepool comic as a final product and share their eco-etiquette messages with the public in hopes of protecting these vital areas where our coastline meets the sea.
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. [Clarification Statement: Examples of structures could include thorns, stems, roots, colored petals, heart, stomach, lung, brain, and skin.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to macroscopic structures within plant and animal systems.]
4-ESS2-2. Analyze and interpret data from maps to describe patterns of Earth’s features. [Clarification Statement: Maps can include topographic maps of Earth’s land and ocean floor, as well as maps of the locations of mountains, continental boundaries, volcanoes, and earthquakes.]
4-PS4-1. Develop a model of waves to describe patterns in terms of amplitude and wavelength and that waves can cause objects to move. [Clarification Statement: Examples of models could include diagrams, analogies, and physical models using wire to illustrate wavelength and amplitude of waves.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include interference effects, electromagnetic waves, non-periodic waves, or quantitative models of amplitude and wavelength.]
4-PS4-2. Develop a model to describe that light reflecting from objects and entering the eye allows objects to be seen. [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include knowledge of specific colors reflected and seen, the cellular mechanisms of vision, or how the retina works.]
*Tenacious Tidepools is inspired by: CA Science Framework Grade 4 IS5 & Birch Aquarium Oddities Exhibit
The Tenacious Tidepools project was designed by Zoë Randall, Lacy Szuwalski and Cady Staff Hwang in collaboration with VAPA and Instructional Technology: Don Masse, Lori Sokolowski, Lauren Leathers, Derek Suzuki, and Claudja Van Orden.
Special thanks to Birch Aquarium at Scripps, Cabrillo National Monument, Ocean Discovery Institute, and Danny Beckwith for their support of the development of this project.