4th grade Colorado Wildlife
Content Standard II: Life
Essential Learnings:
Big Ideas:
1. Experimental Design (observations, question, hypothesis and
design)
2. Scientific testing (conduct investigations, collect and organize
data)
3. Analysis and Conclusions (analysis trends, and conclusions)
4. Principles of heredity and related concepts
5. Relationships between organisms and their physical environment
Students will…..
Identify plants and animals have different structures that serve different
functions in growth, survival, and reproduction. For example, humans
have distinct body structures for walking, holding, seeing, and talking.
Explain the behavior of individual organisms is influenced by internal cues
(such as hunger) and by external cues (such as a change in the
environment). Humans and other organisms have senses that help them
detect internal and external cues.
Understand all animals depend on plants. Some animals eat plants for
food. Other animals eat animals that eat the plants.
6. Structure and function of cells and organisms
Describe an organism’s patterns of behavior are related to the nature of
that organism’s environment, including the kinds and numbers of other
organisms present, the availability of food and resources, and the physical
characteristics of the environment.
Explain all organisms cause changes in the environment where they live.
Some of these changes are detrimental to the organism or other organisms,
whereas others are beneficial.
Essential Vocabulary:
Vertebrate
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predator
prey
cold blooded
adaptation
camouflage
How will we effectively teach to ensure students learn?
 Inquiry
 High Yielding Instructional Strategies embedded in each investigation below
Investigation 1:
Vertebrates
Investigation 2: The
Plains
Investigation 3: The
Foothills
Investigation 4: The
Montane
Vertebrate Bags
Shell Shocked
Home, Home in the Range
Undercover Investigation
Essential Questions:
Essential Question:
Essential Question:
Essential Question:
Can you tell what a vertebrate is?
What adaptation helps Western
Box Turtles protect themselves
from predators?
In what ways did you “regulate”
your snake’s body temperature?
Why would hibernation be both a
physical and behavioral adaptation?
Investigation 5: The
Riparian
Investigation 6: The
Subalpine
Investigation 7: The
Alpine Tundra
Better Beaks
Catching Critters
Take a Ptarmigan
Compare Beaks to Birds
Essential Question:
Viewing Life at the Top
Essential Question:
What adaptations might frogs have
that help them catch their prey?
Essential Question:
Can you compare and contrast the
following animals: fish, mammals,
birds, amphibians, and reptiles.
Can you use a dichotomous key?
How is beak shape an important
adaptation for a bird?
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How will color adaptations help
animals survive?
Assessment
See assessment section in the Colorado Wildlife binder.
Suggested Time Frame:
Scope and Sequence:
7- forty minute sessions
Students have had some experience with observing behaviors and features
of various organisms in FOSS Insects.
DRAFT 5/8/2009
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