4th Grade
What Plant Structures Are Used for Support and Growth?
Students watch a series of videos and ask questions about plant structures. They analyze a diagram and a video about photosynthesis. They conduct a celery investigation to learn about the vascular system.
Reading Further: It’s Not Stealing, or Is It?
What Plant Structures Are Used for Protection?
Students explore the various structures plants use for protection. They use what they learn to design and present a method of protecting a hypothetical plant.
Reading Further: Hey, Don't Eat My Plants
What Plant Structures Are Used for Reproduction?
Students dissect a flower and draw its reproductive parts. They explain how the components of a flower’s reproductive system interact. They form an argument about the structures plants use for reproduction.
Reading Further: Saving Seeds for the Future
How Do Plants Respond to Their Environment?
Students use their bodies to model how a plant might respond to its environment. The model will provide evidence that plants use various structures to respond to the environment around them.
Reading Further: Plants That Trap Insects
What Animal Structures Are Used for Digestion and Circulation?
Pairs watch several silent videos depicting how animals carry out digestion and circulation. They write and record a narration for each video and share it with the class.
Reading Further: Some of My Best Friends Are Bacteria
What Animal Structures Are Used for Support, Movement, and Protection?
Students observe and ask questions about pill bugs. They look for evidence that pill bugs have structures and systems they use for support, protection, and movement.
Reading Further: Robo Motion
What Animal Structures Are Used for Reproduction?
Students fly around the world to different ecosystems in a hot air balloon. They descend to the ground and observe the reproductive structures of various animals.
Reading Further: Vet Tech
What Animal Structures Are Used for Sensing the Environment?
Students build a pinhole camera. They use this camera as a model for understanding how an eye sees images.
Reading Further: Super Senses
How Do Animals Respond to Their Environment?
Students use their senses to find Snowball, a lost pet rabbit. Students use a model of how animals respond to their environment to describe how a rabbit would react to different sensory information. Then they look at their evidence and construct an argument about where to find Snowball.
Reading Further: Elephant Smarts
Unit 2- Energy
How Are Energy and Motion Related?
Students design a ramp that will roll a ball a certain distance.
Reading Further: Coaster Energy
How Is Energy Transferred by Colliding Object?
Students use straws hanging from a zipline to model collisions. They ask testable questions about the energy of the straws, and then answer them using information from this investigation.
Reading Further: Dummies Keep Getting Smarter
How Is Energy Transferred by Sound, Light, and Heat?
Students make observations to identify how energy is transferred through heat, sound, or light. They use their knowledge of energy transfers to come up with solutions to various problems.
Reading Further: Energy from Smartphones
How Is Energy Transferred by Electric Currents?
Students use circuits to investigate how electric current transfers energy. Then they build and solve a puzzle using electric currents.
Reading Further: The Business of Creativity
How Is Energy Stored and Used?
Students act as engineers to design and build a lunchbox alarm.
Reading Further: Blackout!
How Do People Choose Energy Resources?
Students act as advisors to research and report on different energy resources for a power plant.
Reading Further: Your Energy Future
