This site provides educational videos, quizzes and games about amphibians for students at varied grade levels. Teachers or students can make an online presentation and save it for homework or a school task. This resource supports English language development of English language learners.

This resource supports English language development for English language learners. These videos about birds show and discuss birds of prey, nesting birds, and other birds as they interact with their environment. The narrators speak slowly enough to permit teacher interaction. Students can also play games to identify birds. Teachers or students can make an online presentation and save it for homework or a school task.

This resource supports English language development for English language learners. This site provides science videos, lessons, quizzes and games about insects, spiders, centipedes. Games include labeling the life cycle of an insect, identifying insects, among others. Two also quizzes included. Videos should be viewed and evaluated for grade-level appropriateness before showing in class.

In this lesson, students will learn about the complexity of ecosystems, including the classification of different ecosystems, the elements that compose them, and the food webs that form in an ecosystem. They will also learn the basics of photosynthesis and its importance for life on our planet. On this basis, they will reflect on the importance of protecting ecosystems and conduct research to provide solutions to environmental problems in their community. Students will have many opportunities to practice formal and informal writing, to compare and contrast the elements of different types of texts, and to strengthen their writing skills by writing a variety of texts according to the needs of the lesson. The students, moreover, will integrate the use of technology as part of their learning and communication process. Finally, the content and activities of the lesson will provide the appropriate context for students to practice a variety of skills and strategies that will support their capacity for critical thinking, analysis, organizing ideas and information, self-correcting and monitoring their learning.

In this lesson, students construct a habitat for macroinvertebrates. Then they will develop a model to describe the manor and the movement of matter among the plants, animals, decomposers and the environment. This project is designed to span a month or longer.

Students view images of meerkat predators and prey in the Kalahari and investigate how meerkat families work together. They apply their learning in a card game.

Students will explore the life that is supported by the microhabitat provided by a fallen tree as they consider the question: Why does a rotting log make a desirable home for certain plants and animals? Students will examine rotting logs first-hand and will record data about the condition of the wood as well as the animals and plants found on/in/under the log.

In this short video, students join Emily and Dr. Bronwyn Williams from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences as they head to three different North Carolina locations to explore the world of crayfish!

In this short video, accompanying activity, and readings, students learn about the wildflowers at Medoc Mountain State Park. These resources examine how wildflowers survive and their role in their ecosystem.

In this short video and accompanying activity and readings, students learn about Longleaf Pine Ecosystems by exploring Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve in North Carolina.

Students learn how a balance of food, water, shelter, and space impact living things within an ecosystem.

In this lesson, students will identify biotic and abiotic factors in the biosphere. They will describe the characteristics of populations and compare a species' habitat and its niche within a community.

In this lesson, students learn that biotic and abiotic things interact in an ecosystem by investigating selected plot study sites.

Students investigate familiar and unfamiliar ecosystems using Internet resources, explore how various organisms satsify their needs within their environments, and study the kinds of relationships that exist between organisms within an environment.

Students investigate the living creatures in a drop of pond water under magnification.

Each team has a budget of $45 to spend to modify a cup into the ultimate predator.  After predators are constructed, students battle to pop each others’ balloons.  Whichever predator is able to survive is the ultimate predator. 

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 5th Grade Science. 

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 5th Grade Science.

In this activity, students are given roles in a skit designed to illustrate how a salt marsh works and how the organisms in it interact with each other.

In this video, students learn that ecosystems are constantly going through gradual changes. Sometimes those changes are natural, and sometimes they are caused by humans.