Big Idea 17: Interdependence

In this lesson, students will recognize Everglades National Park and Marjory Stoneman Douglas as symbols of Florida. They will complete a culminating activity from a variety of options to show their understanding of: animals and habitats, the importance of Everglades National Park, and the importance of Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ work.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will learn about threats to the Everglades National Park and be introduced to the work of Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Students will work together to create an illustration of a threat to Everglades National Park. Write a 2-3 sentence response about Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ work protecting the Everglades and why she is a symbol of Florida.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will learn about different habitats within Everglades National Park and how those habitats meet the needs of the animals that live there through a PowerPoint presentation and whole group discussion. Students will collaborate to complete an interactive matching activity involving animals that live in Everglades National Park habitats.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will create a program in scratch that sorts animals common to the Everglades National Park according to their main habitat in this integrated lesson plan. They will use the provided Venn Diagram backgound template and choose at least 4 previously-researched Everglades National Park animals to use as sprites. Students will then code the sprites to ‘move’ to the appropriate section of the Venn Diagram (water, land, both).

Type: Lesson Plan

This is an introductory lesson. After completing all components, students will recognize characteristics of five habitats (ocean, rainforest, desert, polar, and wetlands.) Students will be able to identify organisms that live in each habitat. Also, students will learn about Marjory Stoneman Douglas and her Everglades efforts.

Type: Lesson Plan

 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

Students will run a relay race imitating parent Wood Storks feeding their babies; one team during the wet season, the second team during the dry season. Students will draw connections from this relay to what happens to aquatic life as the waters in the Everglades dry.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will act out an "alligator hole ecodrama" occurring during the dry season. Each student will play a role of an animal that depends on the alligator hole.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will read a book on the importance of American alligators and listen to-or act out a play which demonstrates the dangers of feeding wild animals.

This is lesson 1 in a series of 3 lessons. Animals in southern Florida are accustomed to their natural environment. They are wild animals with the ability to exist without human intervention. It is detrimental to the American alligator for humans to feed and/or change their natural environment. In areas of southern Florida where American alligators are found, we occasionally hear about problem gators that have attacked dogs and sometimes people. In most of those cases, it is the people who fed the American alligator that are the problem. The American alligators soon begin to associate people with food. When people feed American alligators, they are actually doing it more harm than good. The American alligator no longer gets the balanced diet it would if it were getting its own food in the natural environment. Also, once the American alligator gets used to being fed by humans, it will no longer be able to find food on its own.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this MEA, students are asked to rank four enclosures for a new sloth exhibit at the city zoo based on a given set of data. Only one enclosure can be chosen to be built for the new exhibit.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought processes. MEAs follow a problem-based, student-centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEAs visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson introduces students to the natural resources available on Earth that help plants to grow. Students will complete worksheets and create informational booklets to support the topics.

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

In this Model Eliciting Activity (MEA), students are being asked to prioritize four endangered species to Florida based on a given set of data. Only one species can be helped at this time and the team needs to decide which species that should be.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought processes. MEAs follow a problem-based, student-centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEAs visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx

Type: Lesson Plan

In this Model-Eliciting Activity (MEA), students will assist Sea World with their manatee rescue. Manatees live in many places in the state of Florida. Sea World rescues injured manatees and then releases them back into the wild. Sea World needs help determining safe places to release them. The factors students need to consider will be distance from Sea World, depth of water, and the population of humans living on and using the water source.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought processes. MEAs follow a problem-based, student-centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEAs visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx

Type: Lesson Plan

In this Model-Eliciting Activity (MEA), students will collaborate with their classmates to solve the problem of removing ants from their playground. They have the opportunity to analyze and compare data sets to clarify, explain and defend their findings in a written letter to the client. In addition, the lesson provides an opportunity to reinforce respect for all living things.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought processes. MEAs follow a problem-based, student-centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEAs visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson integrates text features from reading into science with the study of jellyfish. Students will listen to a story, play a game and create a mock jellyfish to represent how trash often looks like jellyfish to the jellies' prey.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson integrates science and reading utilizing authentic text to teach headings, comparing and contrasting basic needs of animals as well as observing needs of animals.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson demonstrates how students can compare and contrast different types of habitats. This lesson provides students with the opportunity to read and discuss various informational texts about habitats and includes a jigsaw learning activity.

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

Explore the needs of living things, including plants and animals, as you complete this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

<p>Ecologist Rebecca Means discusses the use of statistical sampling and comparative studies in field biology.</p>

Type: Perspectives Video: Professional/Enthusiast

Learn about wetlands and how they meet the needs of various inhabitants. Learn more about how to learn more at .

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Teaching Idea

Biology lesson plans for a Living Things Unit of study.

Type: Resource Collection

In this activity, students will demonstrate how changes in an environment can affect the survival of an animal.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will be able to demonstrate that all penguins live south of the equator and relate where various species of penguins live.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students describe an antarctic food chain through the use of song.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, the students will use number and listening skills as they reinforce their understanding of dolphin behavior using echolocation. As the students listen to the teacher read a story about a dolphin's adventure they can either connect dots or plot points on a graph to figure out what the dolphin gets to eat at the end of the story.

Type: Teaching Idea

Given information about the natural history of a species of marine animal, students will design a zoological environment. Students may need assistance in gathering background information on their organism to design an environment. Teachers should encourage students to be creative and draw or build a model of an environment.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, the student will create a mobile for each of three locations the Arctic, Australia, and Africa. Upon completing the mobile students can research the animals to understand the different animal habitats and how the habitats meet the animals' needs.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will learn about factors that affect manatee populations.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will be able to identify three macro invertebrates that are part of the food web found in a compost pile. Students will be able to sort animals into herbivores and carnivores.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will learn how the destruction of a coral reef affects the animals that live there.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, the students will creatively portray a shark's ecosystem.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this video segment from ZOOM, a Florida girl explores the ecosystem of the warm shallow waters off the coral island on which she lives. Discussion questions and a background essay accompany this video, with closed captioning.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation