Third - Fourth Grade Example

 

Differentiated Learning Experience
Life Science-Environment

This extension would introduce the concept of reactions to environmental change. In each story there is a focus on a particular environment or series of environments.

Illinois Learning Standard Science
12B Students who meet the standard know and apply concepts that describe how living things interact with each other and with their environment.

Stage C Performance Descriptors: Interdependence of organisms in ecosystems
  • Identify adaptations that help animals survive in specific or multiple environments
  • Describe the interaction between living and non-living factors in an ecosystem
  • Predict what can happen top organisms if they lose different environmental resources

Generalizations

  • Organisms depend on their environment
  • Changes occur in environments; some of these changes are caused by the organisms that live in these environments.

Differentiation

  • Tiered through content, based on readiness
  • Tiered through product, based on interest


Content

  • Beginning: Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain by Verna Aardema
  • Developing: Desert is Theirs by Byrd Baylor
  • Secure: Story of Jumping Mouse by John Steptoe
    • Native American legend that discusses more than one environment

     

Process

    All students do the sense making activity. All kids hear about the different habitats.
  1. Students read the story (listen on tape for struggling students).
  2. Students choose three characters in the story and describe in pictures or writing how the change in the environment(s) impacted each character with respect to the basic needs of food, shelter, and one other basic need.
  3. Teacher initiates a discussion using shared inquiry so that students have an opportunity to share what they learned, substantiate their viewpoints, and look for similarities and differences across the different environments.


    4. Product
  4. Each student designs a project to convey the theme of the book read, paying particular attention? to the science concept involved. Possible products might be: video, wall hanging, investigation/experimentation, computer simulation, game, bulletin board, song, salt map, story map, poem, play, brochure.