Content Learning Targets

• Nonliving things can be human-created or naturally occurring
• Soil provides essential nutrients for optimum growth in plants (optional)
• Plants require air, water, nutrients, and light in order to live and thrive
• Green plants are producers because they provide the basic food supply for themselves and animals
• Plants manufacture food by utilizing air, water, and energy from the Sun
• Each animal has different structures that serve different functions in growth, survival, and reproduction
• Animals respond to change in their environment (e.g. perspiration, heart rate, breathing rate, eye blinking, shivering, and salivating)
• Senses can provide essential information (regarding danger, food, mates, etc.) to animals about their environment
• All animals depend on plants. Some animals (predators) eat other animals (prey)
• In order to survive in their environment, animals must be adapted to that environment
• Food supplies the energy and materials necessary for growth and repair
• All living things grow, take in nutrients, breathe, reproduce, and eliminate waste
• Some characteristics results from an individual's interactions with the environment and cannot be inherited by the next generation (e.g. having scars, riding a bicycle)
• Some traits of living things have been inherited (e.g. color of flowers and number of limbs of animals)
• Animals adaptions include coloration for warning or attraction, camouflage, defense mechanisms, movement, hibernation, and migration
• Individuals within a species may compete with each other for food, mates, space, water, and shelter in their environment
• All individuals have variations, and because of these variations individuals of a species may have an advantage in surviving and reproducing
• The sun's energy is transferred on Earth from plants to animals through the food chain
• Seeds disperse by a plant's own mechanism and/or in a variety of ways that can include wind, water, and animals
• Leaf, flower, stem, and root adaptions may include variations in size, shape, thickness, color, smell, and texture
• An organism's pattern of behavior is related to the nature of that organism's environment, including the kinds and numbers of other organisms present, the availability of food and other resources, and the physical characteristics of the environment
• When the environment changes, some plants and animals survive and reproduce, and others die or move to new locations
• Animals that eat plants for food may in turn become food for other animals. This sequence is called a food chain
• Decomposers are living things that play a vital role in recycling nutrients