Grade 3 Teacher Background Information

Formative Assessment Probe

Background information on formative assessment probe and 3rd grade probe.

Purpose

The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about an organism’s dependence upon its physical environment. This probe is designed to determine whether students understand that organisms can survive only in environments in which their needs can be met.

Explanation

The best response is C: The sea star will most likely die in the freshwater pond. Organisms have basic needs. For example, animals need to breathe and consume food. Organisms are uniquely suited to and can only survive in environments in which their specific needs are met. For any particular environment, some animals survive very well, some survive less well and some cannot survive at all. Individual organisms usually don’t intentionally adapt to drastic changes in their environment by changing their physiology (such as gaining the ability to live in fresh water) or in their inherited behaviors (such as where they seek shelter). In this scenario, the sea star would die because the habitat change from saltwater to freshwater was so radical that its physical features, physiology, and behaviors no longer fit the environment.

Administering the Probe

Read the scenario aloud to the students. If needed, read the choices aloud as well. Make sure that students understand they need to explain their reasoning. Teacher prompting may be needed for students to explain or elaborate on their responses. Non-leading prompts can be used to elicit responses as needed: Why did you choose that response? Tell me more. Teachers may also scribe the student’s verbal answer when appropriate.

Grade Level Curricular and Instructional Considerations

“During the elementary grades, students build understanding of biological concepts through direct experience with living things, their life cycles and their habitats.”(National Science Education Standards, p. 127).

“The idea that organisms depend on their environment is not well developed in young children. In grades K-4, the focus should be on making sense of the way organisms live in their environments and on establishing the primary association of organisms with their environments. This should be followed in upper elementary by the secondary ideas of dependence on various aspects of the environment and of behaviors that help various animals survive.” (National Science Education Standards, p.128)

Students should have opportunities to directly observe and investigate a variety of habitats and identify ways that various organisms satisfy their needs in the environments in which they are typically found. (Benchmarks for Science Literacy, p.116).

“Upper elementary school students may not believe food is a scarce resource in ecosystems, thinking that organisms can change their food at will according to the availability of particular sources.” (Benchmarks for Science Literacy, p. 342).

National Science Education Standards

K – 4 The Characteristics of Organisms

• Organisms have basic needs. For example, animals need air, water, and food; plants require air, water, nutrients, and light. Organisms can survive only in environments in which their needs can be met. The world has many different environments, and distinct environments support the life of different types of organisms.

K – 4    Organisms and Their Environments

• 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. When the environment changes, some plants and animals survive and reproduce, and others die or move to new locations.

5 – 8 Regulation and Behavior

• All organisms must be able to obtain and use resources, grow, reproduce and maintain stable internal conditions while living in a constantly changing external environment. Behavior is one kind of response an organism can make to an internal or external environmental stimlulus. A behavioral response requires coordination and communication at many levels, including cells, organ systems, and whole organisms. Behavioral response is a set of actions determined in part by heredity and in part from experience.

5-8 Diversity and Adaptations of Organisms

• Species acquire many of their unique characteristics through biological adaptation, which involves the selection of naturally occurring variations in populations. Biological adaptations include changes in structures, behaviors, or physiology that enhance survival and reproductive success in a particular environment.

• Extinction of a species occurs when the environment changes and the adaptive characteristics of a species are insufficient to ensure its survival.

Benchmarks for Science Literacy (AAAS 1993)

K – 2 Diversity of Life

• Plants and animals have features that help them live in different environments.

3 – 5 Interdependence of Life

• For any particular environment, some kinds of plants and animals survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all.

• Changes in an organism’s habitat are sometimes beneficial to it and sometimes harmful.

Where does my water come from?

The first lesson in this unit focuses on two concepts: (1) the water cycle and (2) the watershed. Both concepts are included in science textbooks.

The water cycle involves precipitation, evaporation, and condensation.

Useful Web sites to provide additional background information and downloadable diagrams include U.S. Geological Survey site for explanations of each component of the water cycle and diagrams at various sizes that can be downloaded and printed out, including the diagram without text. The site also has the story of a drop of water and a printer-ready placemat of the water cycle for kids.

Kidzone. The water cycle explained for kids plus downloadable worksheets or posters in color or black and white of the water cycle and each stage of the process.

Enchanted Learning is another source for water cycle diagrams (with and without text) and explanations.

USGS Water Science for Schools has a variety of resources, including a downloadable coloring book showing the journey of a drop of water.

Precipitation falls as rain or snow into water, or it may fall on the land where it evaporates again or returns to the ocean by running over the land or through the soil to streams or other water bodies. The watershed concept focuses on this relationship between water and land. Following the straightforward understanding that water moves downhill and questions about where the water they drink every day comes from and where it goes, students can begin to understand that all water drains off the land back into streams and that all streams flow to the ocean.

Environmental Protection Agency’s defiintion of a watershed is “that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community.” This site also has a watershed illustration.

To find information about your watershed, go to How’s My Waterway. You can locate your watershed by city name, zip code, or a point-and-click map. You can then retrieve information about organizations that focus their efforts on education, monitoring, and/or protection of the health of the watershed, and follow the links to information specifically about your watershed, including information about other Web sites specific to your watershed, and background on all aspects of watershed science and water pollution.

Water cycle simulation & dirty water/clean water

For background information about the water cycle,

What is a Septic Tank? is a lesson/activity to create a model septic tank.

Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation On-Site Septic brochure.

A salmon’s life journey

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has downloadable PowerPoint presentations on fish habitat, watersheds, and people on their webpage It Takes a Watershed to Raise a Fish. 

Connect with your local Alaska Native organization to see if they have resources.

Fish finders

A wealth of background information is available for teaching about Alaska salmon. This unit has a focus on salmon as ecological connectors. The first part of the unit focuses on the cycling of water, but salmon also cycle in the form of the nutrients they transfer between land and sea. When they migrate to the sea as juveniles they bring nutrients from the watershed, and when they return they bring the nutrients from the ocean to the streams where they die after spawning. The nutrients cycle through predation and decomposition, eventually nourishing the roots of plants that grow in the watershed. Salmon habitat in the watershed is thus both about where salmon meet their needs and about where salmon are doing their ecological work of transferring nutrients.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has downloadable PowerPoint presentations on fish habitat, watersheds, and people on their if you search, ADFG It Takes a Watershed to Raise a Fish.”