Wyoming Science K-ESS3-1

ScienceKindergartenEarth and Space Science

The Standard

Use a model to represent the relationship between the needs of different plants and animals (including humans) and the places they live.

2023 Wyoming Science Content and Performance Standards · ESS3 Earth and Human Activity

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students make a picture model showing where a plant, an animal, or a person lives. They show how that place provides things the living thing needs, such as water, food, sunlight, or shelter.
What Mastery Looks Like: A student draws a frog at a pond, with arrows to water and insects. They put a plant in a sunny spot with water and a person near food, water, and shelter. They can explain why each place works.
Common Misconceptions: Some children think plants need only dirt, not sunlight or water. Others think any animal can live in any place, or forget that people need food, water, and shelter too.
How to Assess It: Give each child pictures of a pond with insects, a sunny garden with water, and a house with food and water. Ask them to place frog, seedling, and person cutouts, draw arrows to what each needs, and explain one choice.

Lesson moves

Build a paper pond with toy frogs, then add insect pictures and water arrows to show why frogs can live there.
Show photos of a sunny window and a dark closet, then ask, "Where should we put our seedling, and why?"
Give pairs habitat cards and living thing cards; have them match each pair and name one need the place meets.
Walk the schoolyard, sketch a plant where it grows, and draw an arrow to sunlight or water it gets there.

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