SCIENCE STRAND IV:
LIFE SCIENCE
This strand emphasizes life science concepts that can be directly observed or explored by students, while minimizing the need to acquire specific terminology.
16. Demonstrate an understanding of the basic needs of living things.
Items will test students’ understanding of a living organism’s need for a source of food or energy, water, gases to take in, and an environment that will allow the organism to survive (protection, light, and temperature may be factors in such an environment). Students should be able to identify how a certain characteristic or behavior helps an organism meet its basic needs, or identify what basic need is being met by a characteristic or behavior; distinguish absolutely necessary conditions for growth or survival from conditions that aren’t necessary; and identify how or why certain conditions can prevent organisms from surviving.
Students should be able to identify or discuss how to keep something alive, taking into account conditions as well as resources needed; students who have experiences in growing things or in keeping something alive will be able to draw on those experiences.
17. Identify ways in which organisms react to changing environments.
This outcome includes ways in which organisms react to major environmental changes at a population level; ways in which organisms react to changing environments at the individual level; changing environments that are daily or seasonal and regular (e.g., temperature, food availability); and changing environments that are not regular. Students should be able to identify which ways organisms react to such changes and the purpose that such reactions serve; and ways that organisms have to meet their basic needs when a changing environment stresses the organism.
Students should have familiarity with how plants and animals change as seasons or conditions change; the kinds of environmental stresses that can affect organisms and the ways organisms can respond physically or behaviorally to these stresses; and what advantages or disadvantages organisms get out of such responses.
18. Distinguish between living and nonliving things and provide justification for these distinctions.
Students should recognize characteristics that can identify a thing as living (the ability to grow and change, the ability to react to its environment, the need for food or another source of energy, taking in gases for respiration, the ability to reproduce, being made up of cells); characteristics that identify a thing as nonliving; characteristics of living things that nonliving things can show; and characteristics that would distinguish an object as having once been living or come from a living thing. Students should understand that many nonhiving things can show several characteristics of living things, but cannot show them all.
Students who have had practice in deciding and justifying whether or not something is alive will best be able to identify or explain characteristics of life cumulatively. Students should be familiar with constructing sets of “life characteristics” and testing those characteristics across known or unknown examples, and vice versa.
19. Analyze and/or evaluate various nutritional plans for humans.
Students should be able to read and analyze Nutrition Facts labels and ingredient lists for food items, and tell whether a food item is relatively high or low in the various nutrients—protein, carbohydrate (sugars and starches), fat, vitamins, minerals. Students should also be able to identify from labels or ingredient lists whether a food item is well-balanced according to the official Food Guide Pyramid (of the US. Department of Agriculture); analyze meal menus or nutritional plans and recognize what nutrients the plan may be lacking, be low in, or have too much of; understand the importance of balance in a diet; and understand how people’s level of activity influences their calorie needs.
Students should also understand that there is no “one best diet:’ but rather many options for a healthy diet, with some broad recommended guidelines, as well as specific guidelines that often depend on an individual’s situation. People need energy and nutrients to be active and to maintain or build their body, but just as people’s size, stage of growth, and activity differ, so too can their nutritional needs differ.
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