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  • 3rd Grade

    Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

Performance Expectations

  1. 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. 3-LS4-2

    Clarification Statement and Assessment Boundary

A Peformance Expectation (PE) is what a student should be able to do to show mastery of a concept. Some PEs include a Clarification Statement and/or an Assessment Boundary. These can be found by clicking the PE for "More Info." By hovering over a PE, its corresponding pieces from the Science and Engineering Practices, Disciplinary Core Ideas, and Crosscutting Concepts will be highlighted.

Science and Engineering Practices

Disciplinary Core Ideas

Crosscutting Concepts

By clicking on a specific Science and Engineering Practice, Disciplinary Core Idea, or Crosscutting Concept, you can find out more information on it. By hovering over one you can find its corresponding elements in the PEs.

Planning Curriculum

Common Core State Standards Connections

ELA/Literacy

  • RI.3.1 - Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers. (3-LS4-2)
  • RI.3.2 - Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea. (3-LS4-2)
  • RI.3.3 - Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect. (3-LS4-2)
  • SL.3.4 - Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace. (3-LS4-2)
  • W.3.2 - Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly. (3-LS4-2)

Mathematics

  • 3.MD.B.3 - Draw a scaled picture graph and a scaled bar graph to represent a data set with several categories. Solve one- and two-step "how many more" and "how many less" problems using information presented in scaled bar graphs. (3-LS4-2)
  • MP.2 - Reason abstractly and quantitatively. (3-LS4-2)
  • MP.4 - Model with mathematics. (3-LS4-2)

Model Course Mapping

First Time Visitors

Resources & Lesson Plans

  • More resources added each week!
    A team of teacher curators is working to find, review, and vet online resources that support the standards. Check back often, as NSTA continues to add more targeted resources.
  • Phenomena: Color Changing Chameleon

    A ninety second video of a chameleon changing from a dark blue-green to a bright orange-yellow color. This resource evaluation suggests how teachers might use the phenomena of color changing chameleons to introduce the concept of ...

  • I'm Stuck on You!

    Students will learn about frog, toad, and chameleon tongues, construct a sticky tongue, use the sticky tongue model to catch prey, and then analyze the data from the activity to see how the sticky tongue helped the frog to catch food in dif ...

  • Natural Selection

    Students are introduced to the concept of interdependence in an ecosystem and its effect on the evolution of populations through a family of rabbits that include five offspring: one small rabbit, three medium sized rabbits, and one large ra ...

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Planning Curriculum gives connections to other areas of study for easier curriculum creation.