Science Curriculum Preview Committee Clarification of Learning Results

Curriculum Organizing Questions	What do living things do that nonliving things do not? What are some living things? What are some nonliving things? What would you do to decide if something is living or nonliving?
Elaboration	Students should be given many opportunities to observe many different life forms (correctly identified as "alive" or "nonliving") and asked to make observations, but not be expected to reliably apply the biologist's accepted criteria for life. Driver pgs. 17-18.
Specific Ideas	Living things eat, grow, breathe, sense things, get rid of wastes, reproduce, and usually move. Nonliving things might do some of the above but not all of them. Living things may have needs that nonliving things do not.
Developmental & Instructional Implications	Elementary students typically use movement, breath, reproduction, and death to decide whether things are alive. Many children do not consider plants to be alive, but do consider inanimate objects that move to be alive. There is an extensive discussion of the development of this concept in Making Sense of Secondary Science by Driver, pages 17-21. Children build understanding through direct experience with living things,their life cycles, and their habits.
Examples	Students could observe collections of carefully chosen, and familiar, living and nonliving things and be asked to list differences between the two collections.