Unit 2 — Characteristics of Living Things
Description
Students develop an understanding of how plants and animals use their external parts to help them survive, grow, and meet their needs. They observe and compare external features of organisms, recognizing that young plants and animals are like but not exactly like their parents. Students also determine patterns in the behaviors of parents and offspring that help offspring survive, such as signals offspring make and responses parents provide. Through observations, reading texts, and viewing media, students recognize patterns in traits and behaviors across a variety of organisms.
Essential Questions
- How are young plants and animals alike and different from their parents?
- What types of patterns in behavior can be observed among parents that help offspring survive?
Learning Objectives
- Make observations to construct an evidence-based account that young plants and animals are like, but not exactly like, their parents
- Identify and describe similarities and differences between offspring and parents
- Read texts and use media to determine patterns in behavior of parents and offspring that help offspring survive
- Observe and use patterns in the natural world as evidence and to describe phenomena
Supplemental Resources
- Printed images or photographs of parent and offspring animals and plants
- Sentence strips for labeling traits and behaviors observed
- Index cards for recording observations of plant and animal features
- Graphic organizers for comparing and contrasting offspring and parents
Life Sciences
Students participate in shared research and writing projects across all units. In Unit 1, students create books describing patterns of change in the sky and write journal entries relating daylight to seasons, aligned to W.1.7 and W.1.8. In Unit 2, students read informational texts to identify main topics, retell key details, and ask and answer questions about organism traits and parent-offspring behaviors, aligned to RI.CR.1.1, RI.CI.1.2, and W.RW.1.7. In Unit 3, students conduct shared research and produce writing about how humans mimic organisms to solve problems, aligned to W.RW.1.7. In Unit 4, students read informational texts about light and sound, write informative texts naming facts about topics, and participate in collaborative conversations, aligned to W.IW.1.2, W.RW.1.7, W.SE.1.6, and SL.PE.1.1. In Unit 5, students gather information from texts and media about communication devices, write how-to books describing their engineering design solutions, and add drawings to clarify ideas, aligned to W.RW.1.7, W.SE.1.6, and SL.PE.1.1.
Students apply mathematics across multiple units. In Unit 1, students use addition and subtraction within 20 to solve word problems involving amounts of daylight, organize and interpret data in up to three categories, and reason abstractly and quantitatively, aligned to 1.OA.A.1, 1.MD.C.4, MP.2, MP.4, and MP.5. In Unit 2, students use measurement tools to order and compare leaves by length, organize data into simple graphs, and apply place-value strategies, aligned to 1.MD.A.1, 1.NBT.B.3, 1.NBT.C.1, 1.NBT.C.2, and 1.NBT.C.3. In Unit 3, there are no explicit mathematics connections identified. In Unit 5, students measure lengths of string using nonstandard and standard units, compare lengths indirectly, and organize drumbeat data into graphs, aligned to 1.MD.A.1, 1.MD.A.2, MP.2, MP.4, and MP.5.
Formative Assessments
- Observe and compare external features of plants and animals from the same species
- Make observations (firsthand or from media) to construct an evidence-based account for natural phenomena
- Read grade-appropriate texts and use media to obtain scientific information to determine patterns in the natural world
- Draw and tell stories about how animals use their senses to meet their needs from their environment
Summative Assessment
Design a tool that is useful and that mimics how a plant or animal uses its external parts; write and perform a live news story from a local zoo birth describing how the parents protect the new animal and the differences in traits
Benchmark Assessment
— not configured —
Alternative Assessment
Students may demonstrate understanding through teacher-led observation discussions, picture sorting activities to compare offspring and parents, or dictated responses about animal and plant features instead of written work. Visual supports such as labeled photographs, side-by-side comparison charts, and real objects may be provided to support learning and communication.
IEP (Individualized Education Program)
For this unit's focus on observing and comparing living things, students may benefit from graphic organizers that use pictures and simple labels to record similarities and differences between parent and offspring organisms, reducing the writing demand while keeping the scientific thinking intact. Oral responses, dictation, or drawn illustrations should be accepted as alternatives to written explanations, particularly when students are describing patterns in animal behaviors or constructing evidence-based accounts. Providing sentence frames such as 'The parent has ___ and the offspring has ___' can support verbal and written output during comparisons. Highlighted or picture-supported informational texts and pre-selected media clips with clear, close-up visuals of organisms can help students access content with greater independence.
Section 504
Students in this unit benefit from preferential seating during whole-group observations and media viewing to ensure clear sightlines and reduced auditory distraction. Extended time should be provided for tasks that require comparing organisms or responding to science texts, and directions for multi-step observation activities should be broken into numbered steps and provided in both oral and printed formats.
ELL / MLL
Throughout this unit, visual supports such as labeled photographs of plants, animals, parents, and offspring are essential for building the content-specific vocabulary students need to describe traits and behaviors. Key terms such as 'offspring,' 'trait,' 'survive,' and 'external parts' should be introduced with pictures and real objects before they appear in texts or discussions, and simplified sentence frames should be available to support oral and written comparisons. When possible, connecting concepts to animals or plants familiar in students' home cultures or regions can help bridge background knowledge and make new content more meaningful.
At Risk (RTI)
Students who need additional support should begin observations with familiar, easy-to-distinguish organisms — such as a dog and its puppy — before moving to less familiar species, helping them build confidence with the comparison process. Providing a structured observation tool with picture prompts and a limited number of focus points (such as size, color, and body parts) reduces cognitive load while keeping students engaged in the same scientific reasoning as their peers. Connecting the idea of 'traits passed from parents to offspring' to students' own family resemblances can activate prior knowledge and create a meaningful entry point into the unit's core concept.
Gifted & Talented
Students who demonstrate early mastery of parent-offspring comparisons should be encouraged to investigate why certain traits or behaviors might give an offspring a survival advantage in a specific environment, moving from observation into functional reasoning. They can explore a wider range of organisms across different habitats, looking for patterns in how external features are adapted to meet survival needs — connecting this unit's concepts to the broader idea of structure and function in living things. Extending into research about a species of their choosing, including how parent behaviors vary by environment, offers an opportunity for independent inquiry that goes meaningfully deeper into the life science content.