Science 6/7
Grade Six
Grade Seven
Life Science
Diversity of Living Things
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Recognize, describe and appreciate diversity
Explore related careers
Examine ways human organize living things
Analyze characteristics and behaviours of vertebrates
Analyze characteristics and behaviours of invertebrates
Examine and describe structures and behaviours for short
term survival
Examine and describe structures and behaviours for long
term adaptation
Assess effects of micro-organisms to society
Assess contributions of science and technology to
understanding of micro-organisms
Interactions within Ecosystems
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Relate key aspects of indigenous knowledge to
understanding of ecosystems
Observe, analyze and illustrate organisms within
ecosystems (food webs, populations, communities)
Evaluate biogeochemical cycles as representations of
energy flow and cycling of matter through ecosystems
Analyze ways ecosystems change in response to natural
and human influences
Propose actions to reduce impact of human behaviours on
ecosystems
Commonalities
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Vocabulary – ecosystem, behaviours, characteristics, relationships, society, impact, adapt, vertebrate, invertebrate
Big Question – How can diverse things be connected? Why is diversity essential to life on Earth?
Essential Questions – How do humans make sense of the world around them? How is this different for different groups? How can
there be more than one way to organize our thinking in science? How are organisms related? How does the behavior of one thing
affect other things around it? How do organisms adapt to various conditions? How does human behavior impact the world?
Concepts – structures, behaviours, cycles, technology
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Scientific Processes and Learning (Domain Literacy) – Safety in exploring ideas, explanations, evidence and models in science,
cultural perspectives in science, decision-making, technology in science, problem-solving, inquiry, attitudes, skills and processes
Fundamental ideas – constancy and change; matter and energy; similarity and diversity; systems and interactions; sustainability
and stewardship
Learning Experience Ideas
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Inquiry-based. Explore essential questions with grade sevens looking at system connections and grade six looking at organisms
Give both groups a set of images – vertebrates and invertebrates – sixes classify and explore, sevens connect through food webs
and explore ecosystems
Graphic organizers to connect organisms/ ecosystems to humans
Whole class sharing of findings when cross-overs occur.
Display areas for inquiry findings – sort according to essential questions
Digital integration where appropriate
Shared vocabulary word wall – add grade specific vocabulary
Consistently bring thinking back to domain literacy – scientific processes, data collection and classification, safety etc.
Learning Plan
Day One – Hooking the learners
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Grade sixes and sevens will work together on the first day. Students will be paired and given a pile of images of vertebrates, invertebrates and
plants. Their task is to sort their images any way that makes sense to them (on the wall, using sticky tack – kinesthetic). They have to be
prepared to explain their sorting rules. Reminder to students for pair work: Listen to each other’s ideas before making a decision together
As students explain sorting rules, begin to record highlights of their thinking Ex. These all have fur, these are all plants. As grade sixes learn
about classification, we will refer to these rules and determine how aligned we were with scientific ideas and ideas from other groups like FNMI.
Ask students to re-sort their images in a different way; if they have a category with many examples in it, can they re-sort further, with more
specific sorting rules?
Record new thinking – This is what biologists (botanists and zoologists do)
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Put up the following essential questions: How are organisms related? How are they different? Which matters more when classifying? Why do
people spend their lives thinking about relationships between organisms? How can there be more than one way to organize out thinking in
science (isn’t there just one right way?)?
These are the questions we will be exploring in the next couple of days. By the end of the unit, we will all be able to answer these Big Questions:
How can diverse things be connected? Why is diversity essential to life on Earth?
Look back at the sorting work. How were the decisions we made for sorting affected by similarities? How were they affected by differences?
When we sort (classify), how did we make our decisions?
Work as a pair to discuss these questions. Record your thinking on a piece of paper.
Join with another group and share your thoughts.
Discuss as a whole group. Then ask: Is there a right and wrong way to classify? Why does this matter? (We will record our ideas and save it for
later).
Begin to formulate a list of places where we could go for answers to our questions.
Outcomes/ indicators - Grade 6 (DL6.1 f, DL 6.2 a, b, c, DL 6.3 d) Grade 7 (IE7.2 I, k, EI 7.3 c, e)