Elementary / Third grade
Third grade
Plant + Algae = Total Photosynthesis for the Earth
Third grade wants life cycles, inherited traits, and evidence about what survives where. Four lessons here land on third grade standards. Two of those standards only count if you run a particular part of the lesson, and the page tells you which part, because a standard you cannot defend in front of a curriculum director is worse than no standard at all.
What standards are covered
Traits come from the parents, and they still vary
In plain words: Children use evidence to show that plants and animals inherit traits from their parents, and that individuals in the same group are not all alike.
Lesson: What Eats Light?, the third to fifth grade version. The shrimp in one packet are siblings, and they do not all come out the same size or grow at the same rate. That spread is the evidence.
Where something grows up changes how it turns out
In plain words: Children argue from evidence that traits can be shaped by the environment an organism grows up in.
Lesson: Do Plants Need Light? Same seed stock, two light conditions, two plants that look nothing like each other. Same instructions from the parents, different result.
Some things live well in a place and some cannot live there at all
In plain words: Children build an argument from evidence that in a given habitat some organisms do well, some struggle, and some cannot survive.
Lesson: How Salty Is Too Salty? A row of jars running from fresh to very salty, and brine shrimp that do fine in the middle of the row and fail at both ends.
What happens to the living things when the place changes
In plain words: Children make a claim about a solution to a problem caused by the environment changing, and about what that change does to the things living there.
Lesson: How Salty Is Too Salty?
Condition: You have to run the rinse and recover extension, where a jar that went too salty gets brought back. Without it the class has a result about salt tolerance and nothing to say about fixing a habitat that changed.
Life cycles, more than one of them
In plain words: Children build a model of the life cycles of several different organisms and describe what those cycles have in common.
Lesson: My Pet Brainy Briny Family.
Condition: The radish has to be planted on Day 1 and run alongside the brine shrimp. The standard asks for diverse life cycles, plural, so one animal on its own does not get you there.
If there is no third grade standard for it, it is not on this page
Why: Plenty of our lessons run well in a third grade room, but their standard sits in another year. Listing them here would make your planning harder, not easier.
Where they are: On the other grade pages, in the bar further down.
Check the grades either side of this one
Why: Both states introduce some of these ideas a year ahead of NGSS or a year behind, so a lesson filed under a neighbouring grade here can be exactly on grade in a Texas or Florida classroom.
On every lesson: The NGSS, Texas and Florida codes are printed on the cover page.
Lessons
Lessons for the Third Grade Classroom
What Eats Light?
Standard: 3-LS3-1, traits are inherited and they still vary from one individual to the next.
What happens: Three sealed bags in the window. One grows a radish, one grows algae, one grows algae with brine shrimp eating it. Third to fifth graders count and measure instead of just looking, so the variation between shrimp from the same packet becomes something they can chart.
Document: ARS-35-BBE-001, the third to fifth grade version. Word file.
Do Plants Need Light?
Standard: 3-LS3-2, the environment shapes how an organism turns out.
What happens: Identical seeds split between light and dark. The dark ones come up pale, stretched and weak. Nothing about the seed changed, so the difference has to have come from where it grew.
Document: ARS-K5-BBE-002, one document covering kindergarten through fifth grade. Word file.
How Salty Is Too Salty?
Standard: 3-LS4-3, and 3-LS4-4 if you run the extension.
What happens: A row of jars from fresh water up to heavy brine, with brine shrimp in every one. The class finds the range where they do well and the point where they stop. The rinse and recover extension takes a jar that went too far and brings it back, which is what earns 3-LS4-4.
Document: ARS-35-BBE-004. Word file.
My Pet Brainy Briny Family
Standard: 3-LS1-1, provided the radish runs alongside the shrimp.
What happens: Six weeks of feeding an animal that hatches with one eye and ends up with three, with a radish going from seed to flower to seed in the same window. Two cycles side by side, which is what the standard is asking for.
Document: ARS-K5-BBE-006, one document covering kindergarten through fifth grade. Word file.
Free downloads
Downloads and where to go next
There is one document per lesson. The teacher material and the answer keys come first, then the student pages sit behind an orange PRINT FROM HERE divider, so you can print from that page on. There is one Administrator Guide for the whole of elementary, and that is the one to hand a principal or a curriculum director. Everything is free and editable whether or not you buy a kit.