Grade 3
Unit 4: Loving Life
essential questiOn: How can we help life survive and thrive at our school?
Project Description: We will understand that all life is interconnected. Life cycles of all living things include birth, growth, reproduction and death. Inherited traits help us survive and thrive and some traits can be affected by the environment. Certain traits can give life advantages for surviving and thriving. We will practice observing, understanding, celebrating and caring for life at school in order to help plants and animals survive and thrive. We will learn from the indigenous wisdom of Native Americans who have lived on and cared for this land and the life on it long before us. Through our field guide and exhibition we will inspire our school community to learn and support life in surviving and thriving alongside us!
During exhibition, we will present our field guide, share our land acknowledgement, role-play our plant or animal, teach and explain our life cycle dance and help our younger buddies celebrate and learn about plants and animals at school. The exhibition will end with buddies completing a Loving Life Pledge and planting squash seeds in the school’s new Three Sisters’ Garden.
What plants and animals survive and thrive at our school?
What patterns can we observe between life cycles of plants and animals?
How does working with a group help plants and animals survive and thrive?
How do traits passed down from parents help plants and animals survive and thrive?
How can understanding life cycles help us take care of plants and animals?
Artwork entitled "Milkweed" by Gail Werner
How can we help plants and animals at our school survive and thrive?
next generation science standards
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. [Clarification Statement: Changes organisms go through during their life form a pattern.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment of plant life cycles is limited to those of flowering plants. Assessment does not include details of human reproduction.]
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. [Clarification Statement: Patterns are the similarities and differences in traits shared between offspring and their parents, or among siblings. Emphasis is on organisms other than humans. [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include genetic mechanisms of inheritance and prediction of traits. Assessment is limited to non-human examples.]
3-LS3-2: Use evidence to support the explanation that traits can be influenced by the environment. [Clarification Statement: Examples of the environment affecting a trait could include normally tall plants grown with insufficient water are stunted; and, a pet dog that is given too much food and little exercise may become overweight.]
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. [Clarification Statement: Examples of cause and effect relationships could be plants that have larger thorns than other plants may be less likely to be eaten by predators; and, animals that have better camouflage coloration than other animals may be more likely to survive and therefore more likely to leave offspring.
3-LS2-1: Construct an argument that some plants and animals form groups that help members survive.