This is a multi-session interactive lesson plan about animal adaptations for kindergarten through second grade students. The goal of this interactive digital lesson plan is to guide students through activities that help them understand how characteristics such as body covering, body parts, and behaviors help animals survive. These lesson plans also build cooperation and communication skills for students. There are additional resources provided for the teacher to use before or after using the HyperDoc.
This Lesson Plan was created in partnership with the Birmingham Zoo.
In this lesson, students will compare and contrast characteristics of living and nonliving things via pictures, class projects, videos and whole-group discourse. Students will record their findings in Science journals.
This lesson was created as part of the 2016 NASA STEM Standards of Practice Project, a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.
In this activity, students will sequence the life cycle of a plant. After reading the story students will work in small groups to put the life cycle in order using sequence cards and then add movement to their life cycle.
This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.
Students will use their knowledge of the parts of a plant to discuss what a plant needs to survive. Students will manipulate their three-dimensional plant to show the importance of all the parts of a plant. Students will use a variety of materials to create their 3D model. Examples of materials include pipe cleaners, paper towel rolls, paper, tissue paper, play dough, clay, etc.
In this lesson, students learn about the characteristics that distinguish living things from nonliving things. By examining video clips and still photographs of a variety of objects and organisms, students gather evidence and develop criteria to decide if something is living or nonliving.
In this lesson, students watch video clips of animals and plants in their natural environment, to gather evidence that all living things have basic needs that must be met in order to survive. Then, to illustrate their understanding of this concept, students draw pictures of real or imaginary pets eating, drinking, breathing, and taking shelter (from the elements or from other animals).
Guide students as they explore how animals and plants meet their basic needs in a city, with help from Plum and her friends from PLUM LANDING. In this interactive lesson, students learn that animals need air, food, water, and shelter, while plants need air, sunlight, and water. Students watch videos and engage with drawing and sorting activities to reinforce their learning. This lesson is designed for teachers to present to students.
Learn about the archerfish and the bugs they eat as you play the Wild Kratts: Archer Fish Bug game.
From Seed to Fruit takes children through the different stages of growth in the life of a cherry tomato plant. Planting a seed in a cup and watching it grow over time is a wonderful way to introduce the life cycle to young children.
Take a field trip in your own backyard. Backyard Animals, introduces children to animals they might find just outside the back door or in a nearby park. Students click on an animal to learn more about it.
Humans and animals share some common features. We use our eyes to see, our nose to smell, and our ears to hear. Animals use those same features to help them survive by finding food and sense danger. A Tail Like This will help children learn more about the features of a few common animals they may see every day.
In this lesson, students explore what lions, tigers, and leopards look like and analyze how the animals' coats help them survive in their different habitats. The students will discuss different big cats and their physical features, discuss the habitats of big cats, and how they survive in their habitat.
This lesson uses a book called Grow! Raise! Catch! How We Get Our Food by Shelley Rotner. This book describes, in general terms, where food comes from. It helps students make connections between people and their environment. After reading the book, students will explore how some plants grow and discover the steps between where food comes from and how it ultimately arrives in the supermarket and on our tables.
This lesson uses the book A Chicken Followed Me Home! Questions and Answers about a Familiar Fowl by Robin Page, a humorous journey into raising and caring for chickens. The purpose of this lesson is to help students understand that organisms, like chickens, have basic needs that must be met in order for them to survive and also begin to form an understanding of where food comes from.
Students will discuss what living things need to live and thrive. They will begin with a discussion of what people need. They will compile a list that includes the following: food, water, a place to live, ways to stay warm when it is cold and cool when it is hot, and someone to care for them. They will then go through the same exercise for animals and plants. They will discover that all living organisms have similar needs. At this point, students will probably realize that seeds, which contain a baby plant, also have these same basic needs. Throughout the lesson, they will form a better understanding of this as they look inside a seed and then plant seeds and watch them grow.
This is the second lesson of a two-part series on where food comes from. In this lesson, students learn how to grow plants and learn about the kinds of things that promote growth (warmth, sunlight, water, soil). Their activities involve learning about how seeds and plants grow and participating in a simple, in-class gardening project.
This is the first lesson of a two-part series on where food comes from. In this lesson, students learn that most of the food they buy in stores originally comes from farms. Students are gathered together to sing a song about growing crops on a farm and learn from the lyrics the kinds of things that farmers do and need to grow plants well. They learn about the five steps in our food system and discuss its aspects in the context of a story about tomato farming and distribution.
This lesson is intended to help students realize that they can learn a lot about chickens—and animals in general—through close observation. They also should come to understand that it is important to learn about the special needs of eggs/chicks in order to take care of them, whether on a farm or in a classroom hatching project.
In this lesson, students will investigate the habitats of local plants and animals and explore some of the ways animals depend on plants and each other. Students will observe living organisms in a local ecosystem and create detailed drawings and descriptions of them.
In this lesson, students design their own butterfly gardens to demonstrate which environmental characteristics make up a favorable butterfly habitat. This lesson is the second of two lessons that focus on butterflies and their habitats. The first lesson in this series is "Butterfly 1: Observing the Life Cycle of a Butterfly".
In "Butterfly 1: Observing the Life Cycle of a Butterfly", students observe one organism over time and compare its early development (caterpillar) to its later development (butterfly). Students will also compare actual characteristics of a butterfly with a fictional representation of a butterfly. This lesson is the first of two lessons that focus on butterflies and their habitats. The second lesson in this series is "Butterfly 2: A Butterfly's Home".
