Elementary / Fifth grade
Fifth grade
Plant + Algae = Total Photosynthesis for the Earth
Fifth grade is the deepest part of this unit. Matter that seems to vanish and then comes back, energy that traces all the way to the sun, particles too small to see, plastic in water, and a design task at the end where the class plans its own experiment. Five lessons. Several of the standards only count if you run a specific part of the lesson, and every one of those conditions is written on this page.
What standards are covered
Where the matter in a place actually goes
In plain words: Children build a model of how matter moves between plants, animals, decomposers, and the air, water, and soil around them.
Lesson: What Eats Light?, the third to fifth grade version. A sealed bag is a closed system. Nothing gets in and nothing gets out, so anything that changed inside it had to move from one thing to another.
It all traces back to the sun
In plain words: Children use a model to show that the energy an animal uses for growth, repair, motion, and warmth came from its food, and that the food traces back to the sun.
Lesson: What Eats Light? The shrimp eat the algae. The algae built themselves out of light. Put the bag in a cupboard and the whole chain stops.
Matter is made of pieces too small to see
In plain words: Children build a model showing that matter is made of particles too small to be seen.
Lessons: Millions of Things Too Small to See, and Where Did the Salt Go? One shows them a cloud of living things they cannot resolve. The other shows them salt that is still in the water while being completely invisible in it.
Weigh it before and weigh it after
In plain words: Children measure and graph quantities to show that the total weight stays the same when substances are mixed, heated, or cooled.
Lesson: Where Did the Salt Go?
Condition: You have to weigh with the lid on. An open container loses water to the air and the numbers stop supporting the claim, which turns a clean result into an argument you cannot win.
Telling materials apart by what they do
In plain words: Children make observations and measurements to identify materials by their properties.
Lesson: Millions of Things Too Small to See.
Condition: Run the clear water control and the milk and flour add-on. Green water on its own is one sample and there is nothing to compare it against. With clear water, milk, and flour in the row the class has properties to sort by.
Mixing two things can make something new
In plain words: Children run a test to find out whether mixing two substances makes a new substance.
Lesson: Where Did the Salt Go?
Condition: Run the baking soda and vinegar extension. Salt and water on its own is a change you can undo, which is the wrong end of this standard. The fizzing pair is the contrast that makes the point.
What people do to the water, and what people can do about it
In plain words: Children gather information about the ways communities use science to protect the earth's resources and environment.
Lesson: How Do Plastics Enter the Ecosystem?
Condition: You have to run the Day 2 research half. Day 1 gets plastic into the tank and shows what it does. Day 2 is where the class goes and finds out what is being done about it, and Day 2 is the half the standard is asking for.
Engineering design, all three, all conditional
In plain words: Define the problem with criteria and constraints written down, compare more than one possible solution against those criteria, then test it, find where it fails, and improve it.
Lesson: Plan Your Own Experiment.
Condition, all three: The criteria and constraints have to be written before anyone builds anything. There has to be a session where groups compare their designs against each other and not only against their own results. And the whole thing has to be framed as improving a prototype rather than as a science fair project with one shot at it. Drop any of those and you lose the matching standard.
If there is no fifth grade standard for it, it is not on this page
Why: Plenty of our lessons run well in a fifth 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 Fifth Grade Classroom
What Eats Light?
Standard: 5-LS2-1 and 5-PS3-1, where the matter goes and where the energy came from.
What happens: Three sealed bags in the window, counted and measured rather than only looked at. One grows a radish, one grows algae, one grows algae with brine shrimp eating it. The sealed bag is what makes it work, because nothing can come in or go out.
Document: ARS-35-BBE-001, the third to fifth grade version. Word file.
Millions of Things Too Small to See
Standard: 5-PS1-1, and 5-PS1-3 if you run the control and the add-on.
What happens: The green in green water is millions of separate living things, and the class gets there by measuring rather than by being told. Run the clear water control and the milk and flour samples alongside it and the same setup becomes a properties comparison.
Document: ARS-35-BBE-003, the third to fifth grade version. Word file.
Where Did the Salt Go?
Standard: 5-PS1-1, plus 5-PS1-2 with the lid on, plus 5-PS1-4 with the fizzing extension.
What happens: Salt disappears into water and the class has to decide whether it is still there. Weigh the sealed container before and after and the total does not move. Then baking soda and vinegar go in a second container, and that one behaves completely differently.
Document: ARS-K5-BBE-005, one document covering kindergarten through fifth grade. Word file.
How Do Plastics Enter the Ecosystem?
Standard: 5-ESS3-1, conditional on running the Day 2 research half.
What happens: Day 1 puts plastic into a tank and the class watches what happens to it and to what is living in there. Day 2 is research, where they find out what real communities and real agencies are doing about the same problem. Day 2 is the part that carries the standard.
Document: ARS-35-BBE-007. Word file.
Plan Your Own Experiment
Standard: 3-5-ETS1-1, ETS1-2 and ETS1-3, all three conditional.
What happens: The class takes something from earlier in the unit and designs its own test of it. Criteria and constraints get written down first, groups compare designs against each other part way through, and the build gets revised instead of being handed in. Run it as a prototype you improve, not as a science fair project.
Document: ARS-35-BBE-008. 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.