Details
| Type of Product: | SciGuide |
| Average Rating: | 
based on 9 reviews |
| Publication Date: | 4/1/2005 |
| Grade Level: | Elementary School |
Description
SciGuides are a collection of thematically aligned lesson plans, simulations, and web-based resources for teachers to use with their students centered on standards-aligned science concepts.
Young children are fascinated as they watch lizards, frogs, butterflies and other small animals develop through life stages, from being born to adult to death. Some of them experience pets at home, while others visit zoos and learn through online resources. Gardening offers an opportunity to observe stages of growth in plants and presents another view of the diversity of life. Characteristics of living organisms, their stages of life and the diversity around us are major concepts developed within this guide.
Elementary students learn about growth and development and characteristics of organisms by observing plants and animals that are part of their immediate environment. Through these observations and experiences they begin to notice and develop an understanding that offspring resemble their parents; that characteristics (traits that are observed) are diverse even within same species; and that patterns and variations occur at every level of life.
This foundation provides the basic building blocks that are instrumental to the further understanding of genes, traits, heredity and reproductions that they will study in later grades.
All resources within this guide correspond to the National Science Education Standards and have been reviewed and evaluated by a team of experienced science teachers, taking into account the needs and concerns of elementary school teachers and students.
Ideas For Use
A Science Guide is a valuable classroom resource for science teachers interested in integrating the web into their teaching. Each guide consists of approximately 100 web-accessible resources (URLs) that have been aligned to the National Science Education Standards (NSES) and vetted across eight educational rubrics, such as Inquiry, Interactivity, Communication/ Collaboration, How Scientists Learn, etc. These URL resources have been assembled in a thematic drill-down structure with linked lesson plans, vignettes, samples of student work and MP3 files that demonstrate how the Guide’s URLs can be utilized in a classroom. Ultimately, a Science Guide is a resource that saves educators time by providing exemplary web resources that have been pre-evaluated and aligned to the National Science Education Standards.
Additional Info
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Science Discipline:
(mouse over for full classification)
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DNA
Genes
Behavior
Science process skills
Biodiversity
Plants
Growth and development
Life cycles
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| Intended User Role: | Elementary-Level Educator, Learner, New Teacher, Professional Development Provider, Teacher |
| Educational Issues: | Achievement, Assessment of students, Careers, Classroom management, Curriculum, Inquiry learning, Integrating technology, Teacher content knowledge, Teacher preparation, Teaching strategies |
Technical
| Resource Format: | application/msword, application/pdf, application/x-shockwave-flash, audio/mp3, image/gif, image/jpeg, text/html, video/quicktime |
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National Standards Correlation
This resource has 16 correlations with the National Standards.
[HIDE CORRELATIONS]
- Life Science
- Life cycles of organisms
- Plants and animals have life cycles that include being born, developing into adults, reproducing, and eventually dying. The details of this life cycle are different for different organisms. (K-4)
- Plants and animals closely resemble their parents. (K-4)
- Many characteristics of an organism are inherited from the parents of the organism, but other characteristics result from an individual's interactions with the environment. Inherited characteristics include the color of flowers and the number of limbs of an animal. (K-4)
- Reproduction and heredity
- Heredity is the passage of these instructions from one generation to another. (5-8)
- An inherited trait of an individual can be determined by one or by many genes, and a single gene can influence more than one trait. (5-8)
- Hereditary information is contained in genes, located in the chromosomes of each cell. (5-8)
- The characteristics of an organism can be described in terms of a combination of traits. (5-8)
- Some traits are inherited and others result from interactions with the environment. (5-8)
- Regulation and behavior
- Behavior is one kind of response an organism can make to an internal or environmental stimulus. (5-8)
- Behavioral response is a set of actions determined in part by heredity and in part from experience. (5-8)
- Diversity and adaptations of organisms
- Millions of species of animals, plants, and microorganisms are alive today. (5-8)
- Process Standards for Professional Development
- Design
- Introduce teachers to scientific literature, media, and technological resources that expand their science knowledge and their ability to access further knowledge. (NSES)
- Content Standards
- Quality Teaching
- Deepens educators’ content knowledge, provides them with research-based instructional strategies to assist students in meeting rigorous academic standards, and prepares them to use various types of classroom assessments appropriately. (NSDC)
- Teaching Standards
- Teachers provide students with the time, space, and resources needed to learn science.
- Make the available science tools, materials, media, and technological resources accessible to students.
- Science as Inquiry
- Abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry
- Understandings about scientific inquiry
Customer Reviews
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Life Cycles and Inherited Traits Review |
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Reviewed by: Stephanie Taira (Honolulu, HI) on November 11, 2012 |
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The Life Cycles and Inherited Traits SciGuide is an excellent resource for teaching a difficult and sometime sensitive topic. The idea of nature vs. nurture is discussed and the activities address this issue. The students think about behaviors such as singing in the shower or jumping when startled and determine why they react in the manner that they do. The SciGuide requires the students to think about the reason for the behavior. (i.e. “When the phone rings, I answer it”. This is a learned behavior because I learned that the ring is a signal for me to answer.)
Students are fascinated by inherited traits and want to know why they look like they do and why they aren’t exactly like their brother/sister. Using the activities here help students to understand the complexities of this subject. The web activities such as nature nurture walk on www.amnh.org and http://www.thetech.org/genetics/you.php help the students to visualize some of these concepts.
When I teach this concept in the 3rd quarter, I will use these resources to help the students understand this concept. I have some students who are adopted so I will need to adapt some of the questions and I also have a set of identical twins. There are many ways to create lessons that cross the curriculum through these activities. (language – learned behavior, math – probabilities, habits of mind)
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Life Cycle |
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Reviewed by: Kelly on August 29, 2012 |
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Wonderful interactive/ kid friendly sites for elementary students. Easy to read and navigate to find information. Great suggestions of where to find information. I enjoyed the BBC websites suggested. |
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SciGuide Life Cycles and Inherited Traits Review |
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Reviewed by: Nancy I (Pahoa, HI) on May 4, 2012 |
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The NSTA SciGuide Life Cycles and Inherited Traits is an excellent resource to use in a genetics unit. It gives clear, concise sources for teachers and provides students with the necessary information to learn more about genetics. Links were provided that addressed topics such as the What is a Gene, Genes and Traits, Genetic Traits, and Genetics. Included in the SciGuide are lesson such as Genetics: Genetic Traits Activity, Create the Kids Activity, and Kid’s Corner; Genetics. The lesson with the greatest impact on me was the Examples of Inherited Traits site. I have been teaching this concept as a lab with my students for several years, but the hand drawn examples we have used in our department often were confusing to the students. The pictures provided by this site were PERFECT. Students always love this lab, but this year they were much less confused and have so much fun seeing if they had traits matching what they saw on the site.
I definitely will be accessing these resources as I do my Genetics unit next year. I will also be sharing it with my colleagues. I teach an inclusion class in Biology and I have already shared this resource with my team teacher. We both agree that the resources presented really give new life to this unit. The lessons and links provided in this Guide allow me to use it in both Life Science and Biology and allow us the freedom to expand the complexity and depth of benchmarks we are addressing (i.e. SC. 7.5.3 Explain that small differences between parents and offspring could produce descendants that look very different from their ancestors and SC.BS.5.4 Explain how Mendel's laws of heredity can be used to determine the traits of possible offspring. While at first glance many of the sites are more based on an elementary level, digging a little further brings great results for content that is grade level appropriate.
Overall this was an excellent SciGuide. Possible expansion to higher grade levels up front would save some time digging for grade level appropriate material.
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Nice Resource can be used with other incets |
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Reviewed by: Michael Leslie on May 2, 2012 |
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When I was looking for a Sci-guide I was looking for something that would relate more to the topic I was covering which was termites. This Sci-gude focuses on butterflies but there was an section on insect and there life cycles. The resources on this Sci-guide were more information for the students which was enough for them to complete their project and assignments. Again this is a great website and I hope it is continued to be offered to the teachers in Hawaiia s wella s the rest of the country. |
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Good information |
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Reviewed by: Helen on April 22, 2012 |
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The sciguide is broken up into two themes. The first theme is about living thing and their life cycles and I think it is more for the lower or elementary grades. To help the students understand the life cycle of different animals. The second theme of many characteristics of an organism are inherited is more for the upper grades. Having to explain nature vs nurture and how things are inherited by our parents. |
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My Review of Life Cycles and Inherited Traits |
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Reviewed by: Ronaldo Relador (Bowie, MD) on January 17, 2012 |
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The sci-guide coud be an extension of the Genetics sci-guide. It communicates the pattern that are observed of living things, which is life cycle. It also gives credit to a very important concept in genetics, which is inheritance, so that one organism has traits very similar to its parent organism. |
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Life Cycles and Inherited Traits Review |
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Reviewed by: Carroll Allen on November 7, 2011 |
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I found the information provided in this SciGuide very helpful. I really like the lesson plans on the butterfly life cycle. The resources found on Enchanted Learning are excellent. However, I find some of the internet resources are no longer available and this can be frustrating when the description of the resources sound like they would have been very interesting and helpful. |
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Great Resources on Life Cycles and Heredity |
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Reviewed by: Judy Okazaki on November 6, 2011 |
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This guide is divided into 2 parts:
Living Things Have Life Cycles (3 subparts:
Stages of Animal Growth and Development;
Statege of Insect Growth and Development;
Stages of Plant Growth and Development)
and Many Characteristics of an Organism Are Inherited (2 subparts: characteristics; Nature vs. Nuture).
The Butterfly life cycle lesson plan and What Makes You You lesson plan are easy to understand and use. I've adapted the What Makes You You lesson plan for my 5th graders. I really liked the recommended websites: "What is a gene," "Examples of Inherited Traits," and the free Brain pop "Heredity" video. Another website that the 5th graders loved was the "Wear A Chimp on Your Wrist" activity from DNA Detective at ology.amnh.org. This activity seemed to help the students see the DNA structure. Overall, I liked how the Sciguide provided sample lessons, student examples, and web resources. It helped me a lot to have these resources in one area. |
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Great Introductory material! |
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Reviewed by: Lauren Clark on October 15, 2011 |
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After perusing through this sciguide, I conclude that this is a great resource for early science learners. Children are naturally observant and curious about their environment. Teachers can facilitate opportunities to learn about the life cycle by using these resources. Children learn about the life cycles of animals, butterflies and other insects through this science guide. There are a variety of resources through this guide. I would definitely recommend it to science teachers! |
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