Standards
MA Frameworks:
ELA General Standard 1: Discussion
1.3: Apply understanding of agreed-upon rules and individual roles in order to make decisions.
ELA General Standard 13: Nonfiction
13.13: Identify and use knowledge of common textual features.
13.14: Identify and use knowledge of common graphic features.
13:17 Identify and analyze main ideas, supporting ideas, and supporting details.
ELA General Standard 19: Writing
19.16: Write brief research reports with clear focus and supporting detail.
ELA General Standard 21: Revising
21.4: Revise writing to improve level of detail and precision of language after determining where to add images and sensory detail, combine sentences, vary sentences, and rearrange text.
ELA General Standard 22: Standard English Conventions
22.7: Use additional knowledge of correct mechanics, correct sentence structure, and correct standard English spelling when writing, revising and editing.
ELA General Standard 24: Research
24.3: Apply steps for obtaining information from a variety of sources, organizing information, documenting sources and presenting research in individual and group projects.
ELA General Standard 25: Evaluating Writing and Presentations
25.3: Use prescribed criteria from a scoring rubric to evaluate compositions, recitations, or performances before presenting them to an audience.
Science and Technology Strand 2: Life Science (Biology)
2.2 Plant Structures and Functions: Identify the structures in plants that are responsible for food production, support, water transport, reproduction, growth and protection.
2.5 Plant Structures and Functions: Differentiate between observed characteristics of plants and animals that are fully inherited and characteristics that are affected by the climate or environment.
2.6 Adaptations of Living Things: Give examples of how inherited characteristics may change over time as adaptations to changes in the environment that enable organisms to survive.
2.7 Adaptations of Living Things: Give examples of how changes in the environment have caused some plants and animals to die or move to new locations.
2.8 Adaptations of Living Things: Describe how organisms meet some of their needs in an environment by using behaviors in response to information received from the environment. Recognize that some animal behaviors are instinctive and others are learned.
2.10 Adaptation of Living Things: Give examples of how organisms can cause changes in their environment to ensure survival. Explain how some of these changes may effect the ecosystem.
2.11 Energy and Living Things: Describe how energy derived from the sun is used by plants to produce sugars and is transferred within a food chain from producers to consumers to decomposer's.
Technology:
Standard #15: Research natural and human-caused changes in some of the large-scale ecosystems (biomes) on earth.
Standard #17: Compare ecosystems with low and high biodiversity. Discuss the time frame that species have had to adapt.