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Knowledge and Skills Statement

Organisms and environments. The student knows that organisms resemble their parents and have structures and undergo processes that help them interact and survive within their environments.

The following is an example of how to assess proficiency of this student expectation (SE) or a portion of the SE.

While many plants change in appearance as they grow into larger adult plants, there are often some similarities between young plants and their adult counterparts. Have students glue a picture of an adult "parent" plant in their notebook. Underneath or beside the picture, have students draw and color what the young plant might have looked like. Using a sentence frame, have students tell how the young plant was similar to the parent plant. "The young plant has __________ that look like the parent plant." "The young plant is _________ like the parent plant." Have students share their drawings and sentences with a peer. Students might recognize that young tomato plants have leaves that look similar to the adults or they might recognize that a pine tree seedling has the same leaves as adult pine trees.

One way in which young plants might resemble their parent plant is by having similar leaf shape and structure. 

Young tomato plant  

Young tomato plant with three small stems and leaves

Dennis Brown at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Adult tomato plant 

Adult tomato plant with small green cherry tomatoes on it.

Forest & Kim Starr, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons 

the circumstances, objects, or conditions that surround an organism including abiotic (climate and soil) and biotic (living organisms) that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine its form and survival
 

an individual form of life, such as a plant, animal, bacterium, protist, or fungus; a body made up of organs, organelles, or other parts that work together to carry on the various processes of life

a classification of organisms whose cells are eukaryotic (have a nucleus and organelles), have a cell wall, and which uses chlorophyll to make their own food through photosynthesis from sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide

a natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes that lead toward a particular result; a continuing natural or biological activity or function
 

something arranged in a definite pattern of organization; the arrangement of particles or parts in a substance or body; the aggregate of elements of an entity in their relationships to each other
 

Research

Trundle, Kathy Cabe, Katherine N. Mollohan, and Mandy McCormick Smith. 2013. “Plants, Alike and Different.” Science and Children: Early Childhood Life Science 50, no. 6 (February 2013): 52–57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43176365. Accessed 17 Nov. 2022.

Summary: Students' curiosity about the natural world can be used to help guide life science instruction. "Plants, Alike and Different" explains that early elementary students should understand that parent plants look similar to their offspring. Teachers can use the Play, Discuss, Explore learning cycle to teach this concept in Kindergarten. Play is important because it allows students to practice different types of plants and generate questions. Students should observe different types of the same plant and look for similarities and differences. These observations can be recorded in the form of drawings. As a class with teacher guidance, these drawings can be used to create data charts where students can easily see the results.

Research

National Research Council. 2012. A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. Washington: National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/13165.

Summary: Early childhood students should understand that plant offspring look similar to the parent plant but are not identical. This chapter explains the biological principle of heredity, which explains why children resemble their parents. Genes are passed down from the parent generation to the child.