Students learn about insect body structures and their functions through print materials and a video, and then design their own insect to demonstrate understanding of essential life processes.
4-LS1-1 Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction. Clarification Statement: Examples of structures could include thorns, stems, roots, colored petals, heart, stomach, lung, brain, and skin. Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to macroscopic structures within plant and animal systems.
This resource appears to be designed to build towards this performance expectation, though the resource developer has not explicitly stated so.
Comments about Including the Performance Expectation Students should begin to make a distinction between argumentation and explanation at this level. This activity can provide the teacher an opportunity to address this distinction. Additional information and links can be found here on this topic - http://stemteachingtools.org/brief/1
This resource appears to be designed to build towards this science and engineering practice, though the resource developer has not explicitly stated so.
Comments about Including the Science and Engineering Practice Have students write about how the function of their insect's structures support its survivability to develop stronger argumentation before sharing verbally. Encourage students to develop and use their models as a tool to demonstrate structure function. Encourage students to identify familiar insects with similar structures and functions to support their argument. Extensions could include designing body structures/behaviors for functions other than those identified in the activity.
This resource is explicitly designed to build towards this disciplinary core idea.
Comments about Including the Disciplinary Core Idea This activity considers a number of structures as examples and relates them to their functions. It also refers to behaviors (e.g. burrowing, bloodsucking) in addition to structures as means to improve survivability. It is encouraged that teachers be explicit about the relationship of structure to function during explanation and encourage their students to do so as well.
This resource was not designed to build towards this crosscutting concept, but can be used to build towards it using the suggestions provided below.
Comments about Including the Crosscutting Concept To help students develop an understanding of the concept of substructures, the teacher could emphasize that structures can be made up of substructures (e.g the head is made up of several major substructures - antennae, eyes, mouthparts). As these substructures form a system connections between the "Structure and Function" and "Systems" crosscutting concepts can be realized.
Comments about Including the Crosscutting Concept Opportunities for students to identify structures and their functions explored in this activity are part of a larger whole are not included in the lesson but necessary to meet the cross cutting concept. Such explorations may include observable body systems of insects and/or other organisms.