Science and Technology/Engineering
20 Grade 3
Lauren Weiss and Margaret Krone
Human Interactions
In grade 3, students develop and sharpen their skills at obtaining, recording and charting, and analyzing data in order to study their environment. They use these practices to study the interactions between humans and earth systems, humans and the environment, and humans and the designed world. They learn that these entities not only interact but influence behaviors, reactions, and traits of organisms. Grade 3 students analyze weather patterns and consider humans’ influence and opportunity to impact weather-related events. In life science they study the interactions between and influence of the environment and human traits and characteristics. They use the engineering design process to identify a problem and design solutions that enhance humans’ interactions with their surroundings and to meet their needs. Students consider the interactions and consequent reactions between objects and forces, including forces that are balanced or not. Students reason and provide evidence to support arguments for the influence of humans on nature and nature on human experience.[1] [2]
LS1. From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes
- 3-LS1-1. Use simple graphical representations to show that different types of organisms have unique and diverse life cycles. Describe that all organisms have birth, growth, reproduction, and death in common but there are a variety of ways in which these happen.
Falcon Curriculum Core Categories
Anatomy and Life Cycle
Animal Behavior
Falcon Curriculum Essential Question
What is a falcon’s life cycle?
Materials
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Sample Plan
This lesson should be taught in March-June when the falcon cam livestream is available. If that is not possible, you can use the prerecorded falcon cam clips.
Hand out the journals. Explain that students will be watching the life cycles of falcons through the falcon cam livestream and will use the journals to document observations.
As a class, go through the About Falcons sections and the Falcon Curriculum videos. Note important vocabulary needed to make accurate observations (nesting, pair bonding, clutch, incubation, pip, eyas, fledge, etc.). You can either hand out a glossary or have students put them in the back of their journal themselves.
Have them illustrate life cycle charts for the falcons, including egg, chick, juvenile, and adult, in the journal so they have a reference.
Give them a standard way to document each observation and do them as a class:
- Date
- Time (Start watching – end watching)
- Weather
- What happens in the nest box
- Adult falcons present?
- Can you identify if it’s the male, female, or a floater?
- What behaviors are they exhibiting? (Pair bonding? Prey deliveries? Incubation? Nest defense? Preening? Loafing? Sleeping?)
- Offspring? If so, what stage of the life cycle chart?
- Eggs present?
- When were they laid? (Check the @DuBoisFalcons Twitter account for the most accurate information about that)
- How many?
- What do they look like?
- Are they being incubated? (Hard incubation does not start until the second-to-last egg is laid.)
- Are they being enfluffeled?
- Do you see signs of hatching? (Approximately 28 days to hatch) Have students estimate when the eggs will hatch.
- Chicks present?
- When did they start hatching? When did they hatch?
- How many?
- What do they look like?
- What behaviors are they exhibiting? (Prey deliveries? Preening? Sleeping? Scooting? Walking?)
- Banding?
- Mark down the bands of each chick and whether it’s a male or female.
- Do you see signs of getting ready to fledge? (Juvenile feathers, branching, lots of flapping exercises, etc.) Have students estimate when the chicks will fledge.
- Juveniles present?
- When did they fledge?
- What do they look like?
- What behaviors are they exhibiting?
- Eggs present?
- Adult falcons present?
Follow @DuBoisFalcons for updates, and tweet if students have any questions about the nesting season. Additionally, as a class, participate in the chick naming contest. The contest is always announced on Twitter on Banding Day.
LS3. Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits
- 3-LS3-1. Provide evidence, including through the analysis of data, that plants and animals have traits inherited from parents and that variation of these traits exist in a group of similar organisms.
- 3-LS3-2. Distinguish between inherited characteristics and those characteristics that result from a direct interaction with the environment. Give examples of characteristics of living organisms that are influenced by both inheritance and the environment.
Falcon Curriculum Core Categories
Anatomy and Life Cycle
Animal Behavior
Geography
Falcon Curriculum Essential Question
What traits do falcons inherit from their parents, and how do they vary? What traits are results from a direct interaction with the environment?
Materials
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Sample Plan
This lesson is meant to be taught in conjunction with 3-LS1-1. As students watch the falcon cam livestream, have them observe and document what traits the chicks inherit from their parents. This will become more prominent as they get older and start to develop juvenile feathers and the signature stripes on their faces.
Take a look at the @CalFalconCam Twitter account and associated cameras and YouTube footage, paying particular attention to the 2022 season’s male falcon, Alden. Alden is distinguishable because he has a limp. Discuss how this is not an inherited trait; it is the result from a direct interaction with the environment (could have been a predator, hitting something, etc.).
Have students watch one of the FalConference: Birds of Prey with Tom Ricardi videos. Tom Ricardi is a licensed raptor rehabilitator who runs Massachusetts Birds of Prey Rehabilitation Center in Conway, Massachusetts. The birds that he shows off in the videos are birds that have traits caused by direct interactions with the environment (i.e. hit by a car, etc.) and are non-releasable because of it.
LS4. Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity
- 3-LS4-2. Use evidence to construct an explanation for how the variations in characteristics among individuals within the same species may provide advantages to these individuals in their survival and reproduction.
- 3-LS4-3. Construct an argument with evidence that in a particular environment some organisms can survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive.
Falcon Curriculum Core Categories
Anatomy and Life Cycle
Animal Behavior
Geography
Falcon Curriculum Essential Question
How can variations in characteristics of peregrine falcons provide advantages in their survival and reproduction in their particular environment?
Materials
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Sample Plan
This lesson is meant to be taught in conjunction with 3-LS1-1. Once students have learned all about peregrine falcons and their characteristics, they can then examine how those characteristics provide advantages.
Watch the LEGO Birds video on how to build different types of birds out of LEGOs. Without looking at each other’s work, have students each build their own interpretation of a peregrine falcon. When everyone is finished, have students all show each other their work. There should be quite a variation in the way they look.
After viewing all the LEGO birds, as a class, discuss how all their models are of peregrine falcons, but they all look somewhat different. Discuss some of the basic characteristics of peregrine falcons that all their models should have in common: basic color, size, wing shape, beak shape, eyes, feet/talons, etc. Ask students what advantages those characteristics provide (camouflage, speed, better for hunting prey, etc.). Ask what would happen if a falcon were larger/smaller than average (may help depending on size of prey in their region), darker/lighter in color (lighter colors would be useful if the falcons lived farther north to blend in better), etc.
LS4. Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity
- 3-LS4-4. Analyze and interpret given data about changes in a habitat and describe how the changes may affect the ability of organisms that live in that habitat to survive and reproduce.
- 3-LS4-5. Provide evidence to support a claim that the survival of a population is dependent upon reproduction.
Falcon Curriculum Core Categories
Conservation and Policy
Falcon Curriculum Essential Question
How did DDT change the peregrine falcon’s habitat and affect its ability to survive and reproduce?
Materials
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Sample Plan
Watch the Falcon Curriculum: Conservation, Beginner videos. Talk about how humans used DDT to change the environment by getting rid of insects that ate their crops and made them sick, but DDT was bad for the environment, and when peregrine falcons ate the birds that ate the bugs that had DDT on them, it made the falcons lay eggs that couldn’t hatch.
Do the Soft Shelled Egg Experiment:
- Explain/review the Scientific Method: a process with a set of steps that scientists use to study the world around them and solve problems.
- Put students into groups. Let them examine the egg. Have them fill out a Scientific Method sheet:
- Ask a question, based on observations: Scientists observed that peregrine falcon eggs affected by DDT did not hatch. Why didn’t DDT-affected eggs hatch? (Observe what regular eggs that can hatch look and feel like.)
- Make a hypothesis (prediction): If the eggs don’t have strong eggshells to protect the chicks, then the eggs won’t hatch.
- Test the hypothesis:
- Examine the egg and record observations (shell is hard, etc.)
- Pour 1 cup vinegar into clear jar.
- Add the egg.
- Talk about what happens (bubbles will rise from the egg) and what they think might happen after it sits in the vinegar for 1 day.
- Leave the egg in the vinegar for 1 day.
- Remove the egg and record observations (shell is soft). IMPORTANT: Make sure the students are gentle with it when they touch it, or it will break all over.
- Analyze the data: Compare regular eggs to the ones in the vinegar. Regular eggs have hard shells sturdy enough to protect the chicks and withstand parents sitting on them to incubate them. Vinegar dissolves the calcium in the eggshells, leaving the eggs with just the soft eggshell lining.
- Draw conclusions: DDT affected the calcium content peregrine falcons had, which made them lay eggs with soft shells that couldn’t protect the chicks, so they couldn’t hatch. Since the eggs couldn’t hatch, the falcon population declined.
- Communicate findings: Do a poster sharing the data.
PS2. Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions
- 3-PS2-1. Provide evidence to explain the effect of multiple forces, including friction, on an object. Include balanced forces that do not change the motion of the object and unbalanced forces that do change the motion of the object.
- Second
Falcon Curriculum Core Categories
Animal Behavior
Falcon Curriculum Essential Question
How do birds fly?
Materials
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Sample Plan
Read About Falcons: Flight and watch the Falcon Curriculum: Flight videos. Talk specifically about the parts discussing gravity and lift. Talk about the different types of bird wings and how, while these birds all fly, they all fly differently.
Do the Audubon for Kids Paper Airplane Birds activity.
Media Attributions
- Soft Shelled Egg Experiment Results
- Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (2022). SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY / ENGINEERING Grades Pre-Kindergarten to 12 Massachusetts Curriculum Framework. https://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/current.html ↵
- Falcon Curriculum Common Core Standards mapping by Margaret Krone. Falcon Curriculum Lesson Plans by Lauren Weiss. © 2022 CC BY 4.0 ↵
- ForTheBirds! Audubon for Kids, 2020. https://www.audubon.org/news/these-paper-airplanes-fly-birds ↵