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Students will be aware of the diversity of living organisms and how they can be compared scientifically. |
a. Explain the similarities and differences in the way plants and animals look and in what they do.
b. Identify the features of different plants and animals that help them thrive in different environments.
c. Sort living things depending on which features are used to group them.
d. Describe the life cycles of various organisms.
a. Classify organisms as either plants or animals and explain why some organisms cannot be classified as either.
b. Identify the external and internal structures that contribute to the ability of organisms to obtain food.
c. Describe reproduction, seed dispersal, germination, and growth in plants.
d. Compare and contrast life cycles of plants and of animals.
a. Explain and apply the system used to classify organisms into kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.
b. Discuss the results of sexual and asexual reproduction in terms of species diversity.
c. Compare and contrast prokaryotes, eukaryotes, and viruses.
d. Describe responses of plants and animals to various stimuli in their environment.
a. Explain how variation within a species increases the chances of survival of the species under changing environmental conditions.
b. Explain how the great diversity of species increases the chance that at least some living organisms will survive in the event of major global changes.
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Students will understand the structure, functions, and reproduction of living cells and organisms. |
By the end of grade 2:
a. List the basic needs of living organisms.
a. Identify the cell as the fundamental unit of living organisms and recognize that some organisms are unicellular, while others are multicellular.
b. Know the levels of organization in living organisms, including cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems.
c. Know that cells continually divide to make more cells for growth and repair.
a. Describe cell theory.
b. Describe the basic functions of organisms such as photosynthesis, respiration, digestion, and excretion and know that they occur at a cellular level.
c. Name the basic cell structures and organelles and identify their functions.
d. Compare and contrast plant and animal cells.
e. Know that hereditary information is contained in genes, which are located on chromosomes.
f. Define mitosis and identify its stages.
g. Define meiosis and identify its stages.
a. Identify and discuss the characteristics of the basic elements of living organisms, including carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.
b. Describe the structures and functions of the basic molecules of living organisms, including water, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.
c. Describe the structures and functions of the cell membrane and its involvement in the cell's interaction with its surrounding environment, such as the processes of diffusion, osmosis, active transport, pinocytosis, and phagocytosis.
d. Explain the chemical reactions necessary for life, such as photosynthesis, respiration, digestion, and excretion, including where these reactions occur.
e. Define metabolism and discuss the role of the ATP molecule in the storage and release of energy.
f. Explain the structure, function, and replication process for DNA.
g. Know that the genetic code used in DNA molecules is almost the same for all life forms and that the degree of similarity in the DNA sequence can be used to compare how closely organisms are related to each other.
h. Describe the process of protein synthesis.
i. Describe the stages of the cell cycle.
j. Distinguish between cell growth and cell differentiation.
k. Define cancer and list causes that increase the risk of cancer.
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Students will understand how and why organisms are dependent on one another and their environments. |
a. Know that animals eat plants or other animals for food and may also use plants (or even other animals) for shelter and nesting.
b. Know that living things are found almost everywhere in the world and explain why different kinds of plants and animals live in different places.
a. Define ecosystem and provide examples of different ecosystems.
b. Provide examples showing relationships among organisms, such as mutually beneficial and competitive relationships.
c. Define the roles of consumers, producers, and decomposers in an ecosystem and provide examples.
d. Know that changes in an organism's habitat are sometimes beneficial and sometimes harmful to the organism.
e. Describe the response of plants to changing environmental conditions such as light, gravity, water, and space.
a. Define the terms individual, population, community, and biome and provide examples of each.
b. List and describe ways living organisms interact with the abiotic factors in an ecosystem.
c. Describe and provide examples demonstrating negative and positive relationships among organisms (such as predator/prey, parasite/host, mutualism, and commensalism).
d. Compare and contrast physical and behavioral adaptations to changes in an organism's environment.
e. Explain why some organisms may survive changes and others may not.
f. Identify several kinds and causes of air, land, and water pollution.
g. Describe the impact of pollution to living organisms and to the environment.
h. Propose methods of reducing and controlling pollution.
i. Describe positive and negative ways humans can affect ecosystems.
a. Define the impact of immigration, emigration, birth rate, and death rate on population size.
b. Identify the factors that control population fluctuations in a given ecosystem leading to dynamic equilibrium.
c. Explain how the carrying capacity of an ecosystem may change as availability of resources changes.
d. Describe stages of succession leading to a climax community.
e. Identify behavioral, morphological, and physical responses to changes in an organism's environment.
f. Give examples of natural and human-initiated environmental changes that may influences levels of harmful substances.
g. Understand how monitoring environmental factors assists scientists in determining the health of the environment (such as soil, air, or water conditions).
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Students will understand the cycling of matter and the flow and transformation of energy through systems of living things. |
a. Know that animals need to take in food, and plants need light to produce their food.
b. Know that many materials can be recycled or used again and again, sometimes in different forms.
c. Describe examples of simple food chains.
a. Identify the sun as the source of food energy for a variety of living organisms on earth.
b. Define and provide examples of herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores.
c. Trace the flow of energy through the organisms in a variety of ecosystems.
d. Describe food webs in the ocean and on land and discuss their significance.
a. Describe the transformation of energy as the energy cycles through processes of photosynthesis and respiration.
b. Know that matter recycles within ecosystems and that although the form of matter changes, the total amount remains constant.
c. Diagram and discuss cycles in ecosystems including water, carbon, and nitrogen.
d. Describe the environmental conditions that lead to the slow formation of fossil fuels and know that by burning these fossil fuels heat, carbon dioxide, and other gases are released into the environment.
a. Discuss sources and sinks in matter and energy cycles.
b. Diagram and explain trophic levels in an ecosystem.
c. Describe the laws of thermodynamics and apply the principles to an ecosystem.
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Students will understand how biological traits are passed on to successive generations. |
a. Identify variations among individuals within a population.
b. Know that offspring are different from their parents, yet closely resemble them, because traits are transferred from one generation to the next.
a. Distinguish between traits inherited from parents and behaviors that are learned.
b. Understand that traits are influenced by environmental conditions.
a. Discuss the processes and results of asexual reproduction.
b. Discuss the processes and results of sexual reproduction.
c. Describe Mendel's experiments, including the principle of dominance and recessiveness, the principle of segregation, and the principle of independent assortment.
d. Predict genotype and phenotype ratios of possible offspring using a Punnett square for monohybrid and dihybrid crosses.
e. Know that traits passed from parents to offspring are encoded in segments of DNA molecules called genes.
f. Describe how selective breeding for particular traits has resulted in new varieties of cultivated plants and domestic animals.
a. Explain how the sorting and recombination of genes in sexual reproduction result in a great variety of possible gene combinations in the offspring of any two parents.
b. Describe how an inherited trait of an individual can be determined by one or by many genes, and how a single gene can influence more than one trait.
c. Describe how inserting, deleting, or substituting DNA segments can alter (mutate) genes.
d. Know that gene mutations can be caused by many factors (such as radiation and chemicals).
e. Know that a mutated gene may be passed on to every cell that develops from it, but can only be passed on to offspring when the mutation occurs in a sex cell.
f. Provide examples to show that mutations and new gene combinations may have positive, negative, or no effect on an organism.
g. Explain how although each cell in an individual has identical genetic information, cells within an individual vary because different portions of the DNA code are activated in different cells.
h. Identify and discuss inherited genetic disorders in humans.
i. Discuss the ethics and implications of genetic engineering.
j. Evaluate how human behavior is influenced by heredity, culture, and personal experience.
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Students will understand the arguments for natural selection as scientific explanation of biological evolution. |
By the end of grade 2:
a. Define the term endangered, provide examples of endangered organisms, and identify reasons why some organisms are endangered.
b. Define the term extinct, provide examples of organisms that are extinct, and identify reasons why some organisms become extinct.
c. Identify fossils as the remains or imprints of once-living organisms.
d. Know that some organisms that lived long ago are similar to existing organisms, and some are quite different.
a. Know that individuals vary, and that those best adapted to an environment are the ones most likely to survive and reproduce.
b. Compare fossils to one another and to living organisms according to their similarities and differences.
c. Relate the age of fossils to their position in a rock layer and explain why the fossils in more recently formed rock layers are more likely to resemble existing species.
a. Define the phrase "survival of the fittest" and relate it to the process of natural selection.
b. Know that small differences between parents and offspring can accumulate through successive generations, so descendants are different from their ancestors.
c. Define biological evolution as the process whereby the earth's present-day species developed from earlier species.
d. Understand how selective breeding influences the process of evolution.
a. Describe various scientific theories explaining the origin of life on Earth.
b. Explain Darwin's theory of natural selection.
c. Understand how the work of other scientists (for example, Mendel, et al) supports Darwin's theory.
d. Evaluate evidence supporting biological evolution, including morphological, anatomical, and molecular features of fossils and living organisms.
e. Describe patterns of evolution (i.e., divergent, convergent, and coevolution).
f. Explain biological and morphological characteristics used to define a species.
g. Define gene pool and discuss the implications of varying allele frequencies within a gene pool.
h. Discuss conditions defined in the Hardy-Weinberg Principle that result in genetic equilibrium.
i. Know that disruption of genetic equilibrium may result in evolution.
Go to Human Organisms and Society: Questions 21-24
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