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Main Information

Grade level

1st grade

artifact category

Group Task, Formative Assessment

Storyline chapter

scientific practices

Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering)

crosscutting concepts

Cause and Effect

disciplinary core ideas

PS4.C: Information Technologies and Instrumentation

Artifact Description

Students worked in small groups using a digital sound board to listen to 4 different animal sounds together. Using a graphic organizer, the students drew each animal, wrote down the animal sound phonetically, and they hypothesized why the animal might be making that sound.

This task fits within the narrative flow of the early chapters of the storyline, as students ask questions and explore parent-offspring similarities and differences and parent-offspring behaviors (related to life science standards 1-LS3-1 and 1-LS1-2). The emphasis on phonetically spelling the sound embeds ELA practices within the unit, a common practice in elementary classrooms. This task contributes to the waves-related core ideas insofar as students are positioned to ask questions and hypothesize about how sound can be used to communicate information (PS4.C).

Student Thinking

Here, we focus on the graphic organizer’s section prompting, “Why might they be making that sound?” because of its relationship to a disciplinary core idea related to waves.

In Artifact A, the student hypothesizes that animals can make unintentional sounds (like eating and sleeping) as well as intentional sounds for communicating. Artifacts B and C connect several sounds to animals fulfilling survival needs, like finding/desiring food and the fight for survival (see life science standard 1-LS1-2). While these answer the “why” question in one sense, they leave it unanswered in another, which becomes clearest in Artifact C. Here, the student identifies that the tiger might be making the sound because it is fighting, but does not specify what –if anything– the tiger’s “GRRR! GrrrRAAR!” sound might serve to communicate with another animal. Artifact D is the clearest in identifying that sounds can serve as a way for animals to communicate by “talking.”

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3. Observing Animal Sounds

Main Information

Artifact Description

Student Thinking

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