VEX GO - Fun Frogs - Unit Overview

Grades

3+ (Ages 8+)

Time

40 minutes per lab

Unit Essential Question(s)

How do organisms change over their life cycle in relation to their environments?
How can writing be used as a tool by scientists and other professionals?

Unit Understandings

The following concepts will be covered throughout this Unit:

How an organism’s physical changes and growth enable it to interact with their environment in different ways.
How scientists and other professionals use written descriptions to explain and understand observations over time.

Lab Summary

Click on the following tabs for a summary of what the students will do and learn in each lab.

Lab 1 - Tails and Tadpoles

Main Focus Question: How does a frog's life begin?

Students will create a model of frog’s natural habitat using the VEX GO Kit and classroom materials. Then, they will build the tadpole and the tadpole with back legs, from the VEX GO Build Instructions. For each build, students will place their creature into the habitat, photograph it, and write a description of that phase of the frog’s life to create a Field Journal.

Lab 2 - I'm a Big Frog Now

Main Focus Question: How does a frog change as it grows?

Students will add other animals that naturally occur in the frog’s habitat to the classroom model using the VEX GO Kit and classroom materials. Then, they will build the froglet and frog from the VEX GO Build instructions. For each build, students will place their creature into the habitat, photograph it, and write a description of that phase of the frog’s life, to create a Field Journal.

Unit Standards

Unit Standards will be addressed in every Lab within the Unit.

Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

NGSS 3-LS3-2: Use evidence to support the explanation that traits can be influenced by the environment.

How Standard is Achieved: In Lab 1, students construct models of tadpoles and tadpole habitats. Once they have completed their models, they will write a description of that phase of the frog’s life cycle from either a scientific or a creative perspective and include information about the habitat. In the Share section, students will discuss how a tail helps the tadpole in its environment and how frogs are influenced by their environment from the beginning of their life cycle.

In Lab 2, students will continue to move through creating the models of a frog’s life cycle. As they finish each model, they will place the frog in a habitat, and create a Field Journal page for that specific life cycle. Students will observe how a frog’s environment influences the traits of the frog and discuss those influences in the Share section of the Lab.

Common Core State Standards (CCSS)

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.3.3: Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect.

How Standard is Achieved: In Lab 1 and 2, students are creating a Field Journal in Play Part 1 and 2, in which they are using images and descriptive writing to describe the sequential phases of a frog’s life cycle in order, and offering ideas about the relationship between each phase in terms of time, and cause/effect with the environment.

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