Big Idea 16: Heredity and Reproduction

This is an assessment idea to assess student's knowledge of the concepts taught in the aligned benchmark. The assessment should follow the in-depth teaching of this benchmark.

Type: Assessment

Click on the different pictures (frog, bird or butterfly). Click and drag the different pictures to complete each life cycle.

Type: Educational Game

This resource shows each stage in the life cycle of a frog. The life cycle of a frog includes the egg stage, tadpole stage, froglet stage, and adult frog stage. Tadpoles live in water and use gills to breathe. They develop lungs as they mature into frogs and live on land.

Type: Image/Photograph

 This lesson covers:

• A humpback whale’s basic needs and how they are similar to humans
• A humpback whale’s feeding habits and social behaviors
• Threats to humpback whales and how scientists work to protect them

Type: Lesson Plan

Type: Lesson Plan

Type: Lesson Plan

This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help students apply the concepts of life cycles, the understanding that all living things have basic needs, a knowledge of habitats and practice working with money as they build and experiment with containers to meet the water needs of bean plants in all stages of their life cycle. It is not intended as an initial introduction to these concepts.

Type: Lesson Plan

This engineering design challenge is intended to help students apply the concepts of life cycles, the understanding that all living things have basic needs, build on their knowledge of habitats, and practice working with money as they build structures to meet the needs of a tadpole. It is not intended as an initial introduction to these concepts.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson integrates text features from reading into science with the study of plant parts. Students will listen to a story, watch a short video and design their ideal plant while being able to recognize the various parts of all plants.

Type: Lesson Plan

This resource was completed on a general lesson plan template, but also includes the 5E lesson model. It is an interactive lesson that includes an outdoor exploration. If you do not have the ability of taking your students outdoors you can complete the lesson by having an ant farm in the classroom available for student observations.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson will help students understand the importance of carefully observing and caring for eggs and chickens in the classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will explore the life cycle of the butterfly through different centers and observation of a living butterfly going through its life cycle.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students observe the life cycle of a lima bean.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will be introduced to the study of plants in this lesson. First they will sprout bean seeds on moistened paper towels, then make drawings and measurements of their growth. They will watch time-lapse videos that illustrate a plant's major growth stages. Another clip covers fruits and asks students to consider how their seeds are spread. They will gather seeds by walking outside with an old sock over one of their shoes, then plant their sock to observe the resulting plants.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson can be used to extend students' understanding of the life cycles of organisms by comparing and contrasting them. Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar will be read first, then students will watch a video that studies the developmental stages of frogs, dragonflies, and butterflies. Insect and frog life cycles will be compared to one another, then they will be compared to the stages of human development.

Type: Lesson Plan

Come along as we explore how a plant grows and develops from a tiny seed into a mature adult plant. Learn what a seed needs to sprout and grow and what a plant needs to grow. This is an interactive tutorial that explores the major stages in the life cycle of a typical plant. 

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Join Peep, a baby chick, and explore the major life cycle stages an animal may go through during its life in this interactive tutorial.  

Type: Original Student Tutorial

This is an accessible, easy-to-read book about the life cycle of a butterfly. It can be downloaded in PowerPoint, Impress, or Flash format. For struggling or non-readers, the book can be read to the in a variety of voices. All of the books on the Tar Heel Reader site can be used with the Intellikeys keyboard and a custom overlay, a touch screen, and/or 1-3 switches. The text and background colors can be modified for students with visual impairments.

Type: Presentation/Slideshow

This teaching idea overviews a project by second grade students who studied life cycles of insects and created a book with illustrations about insects. Each entry contained descriptive information about the insects being studied- including habitat, life cycle, diet, behavior, predators, and interesting facts.

Type: Teaching Idea

Students learn about the life cycle of plants by watching a time-lapse video, providing students with further evidence that all living things grow and change throughout the life cycle. There are also two optional video clips that show students how to set up a germination experiment, and how to collect seeds with socks and grow plants from them.

Type: Teaching Idea

Students learn about the life cycle of a butterfly.

Type: Teaching Idea

Younger students can learn about plant biology. Topics include characteristics of living things, germination and growth, the basic parts of plants, photosynthesis, reproduction, and ecological adaptations of plants. The information presented can also be ordered as a video.

Type: Text Resource