Mrs. Brown’s 3rd Grade Science Unit
Daily Lesson Plans
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Day |
Lesson |
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Friday
Preparation |
Ask students to bring in pictures, words, or
articles of plants, animals, people, living environments, and varieties of
foods to be used in developing a bulletin. Students will be asked to think
about how their items relate to one another and other students’ items. Have bulletin boards prepared for Monday as
follows: photos of indigenous animals posted to appropriate continents, food
chain and life cycle. Place Morning Glory Plants in 4 areas of the
room. Place caterpillars in terrarium with food
before class on Monday a.m. Procure adaptive technology for IEP student
to promote authentic learning: Speaking Spelling Ace reference aid and a
Reading Pen. |
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Monday Monday- Page 2 |
Activity 1 (15 minutes). Have students discuss in
groups how to categorize the items they have brought from home. Have students place pictures, articles,
words from home on each individual group’s bulletin board. Have students explain how categories were
developed and why. What do these things have in common? How do they relate to
each other? Activity 2 (30 minutes). Assign spelling words to be
typed into PDAs, then
copied into a Microsoft Word Document from the whiteboard: seedling, plant,
organism, animal, abdomen, insect, oxygen, food, water, shelter, life cycle,
food chain, egg, eaglet, cocoon, butterfly, flower. Students will be advised
to give dictionary definitions in their own words via http://www.m-w.com/dictionary.htm
Challenge words: environment, biome, breathe, interdependent, relationship. Activity 3 (15 minutes). Facilitate group discussion regarding the
spelling words. What do the words have in common? What do living things have in common?
What do living things need to survive? All living organisms need food, water,
oxygen and sunlight to survive. All plants and animals have the same basic
needs and rely on each other to provide those needs. Ask students to explain
what a food chain is?Ask
students to identify a flowering plant. Ask students to identify an insect
that depends on that flower for food.
What would eat the insect? What
would prey upon that animal? Illustrate a food chain on the board with
student input. Why do butterflies eat
nectar from flowers? To me mean? To kill the flower? Most organisms act out of will to survive. Activity 4 (homework). Students will be instructed to
write down 3 questions that they have about a food chain and to discover the
answer by accessing http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngexplorer/teachers/ to discover their own answers. Challenge: compose 5 questions and answers
for them. Questions and Answers must
be emailed to me. Activity 5 (10 minutes). Students will be given a
random card “organism” necessary for the environment’s survival (print from
Microsoft Word, the sun, water, maple tree, squirrel, human, ants, etc.) and
asked to form a circle. Each student holds their card so all others can read
the card. One person will be given a ball of yard and told to hold the end of
the string while throwing it to another person (without letting go of the
end). The person throwing the ball must identify how the two elements on the
note cards relate to each other or how they benefit each other. The person catching the ball of yard
continues to hold onto the string and throw it to another person. The same questions
must be asked/answered. After everyone has been
joined in the life cycle/food chain web, one element is eliminated from the
environment. Ask students to make
silent observations of cause and effect.
How will the elimination of this item affect them specifically. Students will write a paragraph explaining
their observations and e-mail it to me. Activity 6: Visit
your assigned tables Morning Glory Plant and terrarium. Document
observations. This is to be done daily at |
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Tuesday |
Lesson 2 |
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Tuesday – Page 2 |
Activity
1 (25 minutes).. A food chain video will be observed
(National Geographic) website. Students will be asked to take notes, develop
3 questions regarding a plant, animal, insect or food chain. (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/education/teacher_store/products/WE86014.html). Activity
2 (15 minutes): Students will be directed to the
website to explore an example of an aquatic food chain and the balance of
nature (challenge, visit other sites): http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngexplorer/0309/articles/mainarticle.html). Activity
3 (20 minutes): Students will be asked to document
answers to their questions
utilizing the Internet as a resource. Sources, questions and
answers must be documented in Microsoft Word and e-mailed to me. Challenge: develop 5 Q and A’s via the Internet. Activity 4 (20 minutes): Students will take a nature
walk around the school, taking clipboards, paper and pencil. Students will be
advised to write down whatever is observed on their walk (plant, animal life,
manmade items, trash, pollution). Students will then be broken into groups to
discuss their observations. I will ask
each group for suggested ways to group the items viewed. Write observations on the board for
discussion. What did Group I see on
their nature walk? How could you group the items that you saw? Was it a
plant, animal or manmade? Was the item beneficial or harmful to the
environment? Let’s group like things together. What did you see on your walk? Each group’s observations will be listed on
the board. What do these things have
in common? How are these things alike? How are they different? Does one thing need another? How does one affect another’s life, ability
to breath, eat, drink or find shelter?
Students will be asked to select an organism for analysis utilizing
the Internet to conduct research for a brief report. Students will determine
where the organism lives, what it eats, how it obtains water to drink, what
its natural enemies are, what might eat this
organism or use it for food or shelter? Develop a Microsoft Word document and
e-mail it to me. Challenge: develop a 2 page power point presentation and
demonstrate to the class. Discussions and blackboard comparisons will be introduced to
form commonality and trigger memories of knowledge. Activity 5 (homework):
Students will be advised to draw and label their own food chain using
four different plants, animals, insects. Challenge:
students will develop a food chain containing 8 organisms. Students will be
instructed to write sentences using all spelling words or to construct a poem
utilizing at least 6 spelling words (to be developed as a Microsoft Word
document and e-mailed to me). |
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Wednesday Lesson 3 Wednesday Page 2 Lesson 3 |
Activity 1 (15 minutes): Students will continue to observe and
document the life cycle of a caterpillar and plant in various biomes. Scientific observations will be done as
scheduled. Students will continue to analyze their observations and make
predictions. Scientific calculators
are to be used and data graphed daily. Activity 2 (10 minutes): Facilitate
a discussion of different organisms as having different life cycles. All life has a point of beginning when life
occurs which is the beginning of the life cycle. Some organisms, like plants, are born,
mature, and die rapidly. Redwood trees have life cycles lasting for thousands
of years. Each family of living things has its own life. Can you tell me what
you know about the life cycle of a plant? Activity 3
(15 minutes): Have you ever seen a plant before (direct students’ attention to the
morning glory plants throughout the room)?
How does a plant begin life? What are its parts? What does it need to
survive? Have you ever seen an insect
before? (look inside the terrariums where the
caterpillars are eating). How did it begin life? What are its parts? What does it need to survive? Have you ever
seen a bird before? How did it begin
life? What are its parts? What does it
need to survive? How have you changed in what you look like or are able to do
since a baby? Who do you look like?Mom,
Dad, Grandma? Has anyone ever had a
kitten or puppy? Did the puppy or
kitten look like its parent? Did it have two ears, a tail, two eyes, fur? How
big was the puppy when you brought her home?
What happened after you fed and gave her water to drink? After a
day? A month? A year?
Three years? Did the puppy look
like its parents? Will your puppy live forever on earth? What would happen if you put a polar bear
in the desert? What happens if the
pesticides used to kill insects on plants, kill the deer that eat the plants?
Show the class a Morning Glory seed and ask “what do you think will happen to
this seed if I buried it outside?” E-mail me your Microsoft Word document
answer. be instructed to access the web sites,
print out diagrams and complete the worksheets. An overhead projector will illustrate the life cycle of a plant (seed,
monocot/dicot, plant maturity, seed development) at http://sln.fi.edu/tfi/units/life/living/living.html. Worksheets can be obtained from http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/plants/printouts/floweranatomy.shtml http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/plants/printouts/labelflower.shtml Activity 5 (45 minutes): http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/BioBookPLANTANAT.html Students will
be expected to participate in planting and caring for enclosed terrariums,
planting seeds and plants into open
pots, observing and documenting soil conditions, temperature and appearance
and managing the care of the plants and cocoons. Students will employ the
use of thermometers, graphing calculators and other tools for observation and
recording data. Activity 6 (10 minutes): The study of the Morning Glory’s “inner
time clock,” the enclosed plant and open biome observations will be recorded
and graphed utilizing a graphing calculator as a group project to compare
study results. See the link to http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/lessons.cfm?BenchmarkID=11&DocID=286 |
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Thursday |
Lesson 4 |
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Thursday Page 2 Lesson 4 |
Activity 1
(20 minutes): http://www.enchantedlearning.com/themes/butterfly.shtml “Another organism
with a rapid life cycle is the monarch butterfly. The butterfly’s life cycle
involves a process of metamorphosis. During its life cycle, the
butterfly changes from one form to a completely different form. During the
butterfly's life cycle, it changes from egg to larva(caterpillar)
to pupa (cocoon) to adult. Each of the four distinct life phases is a natural
part of the life cycle. The egg of an adult female is fertilized by a
male. The female monarch butterfly then places the egg under a milkweed leaf
(as a nest). The egg soon hatches into a larva which is an immature
animal. The larva of the butterfly looks completely different than the adult.
The larva eats (from the milkweed) and grows. Soon, the larva enters into the
pupa stage by covering itself with a protective case known as a cocoon.
During the pupa stage, change takes place. When ready, the fully developed
butterfly comes out of the pupa. The mature adult butterfly is now
ready to reproduce and continue its life cycle. Animals have strong survival
instincts. An instinct is a behavior with which an animal is born. For
example, from birth, a puppy instinctively knows to suck milk from its
mother. Instincts help animals find food, mate, reproduce, and raise their
young. Survival instincts also lead animals to migrate or move to a
better habitat. Some animals migrate short distances. Others, like the
wildebeest on the African Serengeti, are continually migrating great
distances. Why do they migrate? To find better living conditions.” Activity 2 (20 minutes): Group discussion: Ask students
to identify what an adult insect is, label an
insect’s body parts. Head, thorax,
abdomen, antennae, wings, proboscis.
What do insects need to survive?
Where do they live? What do they eat?
Does an insect have a lifecycle? Where does the butterfly obtain water
to drink? What might eat a butterfly
as food ? Discuss food chain and illustrate it on
the board. Activity 3 (25 minutes): Assemble, complete, and color the Printable Butterfly Book.http://www.enchantedlearning.com/themes/butterfly.shtml |
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Activity 2
(15 minutes): Students will record data from
plant and caterpillar biomes. |
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parts. Students will color the
diagram. http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/birds/findit/qeagle.shtml |
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Activity 1
(20 minutes): Class Review – Organism Jeopardy http://ofcn.org/cyber.serv/academy/ace/sci/cecsci/cecsci035.html |
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