GEMS Correlations with the Florida Sunshine State Standards
Grade Level Expectations and Benchmarks for Science
Grades 3-5
Strand G: How Living Things Interact with Their Environments
Return to Sunshine State
Standards Page
Standard 1: The student understands the competitive, interdependent,
cyclic nature of living things in the environment.
Benchmark SC.G.1.2.1: The student knows ways that plants, animals,
and protists interact.
Fourth Grade
1. knows how plants and animals interact with one another in an ecosystem
(for example, organization of communities, flow of energy through food
webs).
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, On Sandy Shores, Schoolyard Ecology
2. understands the relationship among organisms in aquatic and terrestrial
food chains (for example, the role of producers, consumers, and decomposers).
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats
Fifth Grade
1. understands the various roles of single-celled organisms in the environment.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, Environmental Detectives
Benchmark SC.G.1.2.2: The student knows that living things compete
in a climatic region with other living things and that structural adaptations
make them fit for an environment.
Third Grade
1. knows how organisms with similar needs in a climatic region compete
with one another for resources such as food, water, oxygen, or space.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, Buzzing a Hive, Schoolyard Ecology
2. knows behavioral and structural adaptations that allow plants and
animals to survive in an environment.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, Buzzing a Hive, On Sandy Shores, Schoolyard Ecology
Fifth Grade
1. understands how changes in the environment affect organisms (for
example, some organisms move in, others move out; some organisms survive
and reproduce, others die).
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, Environmental Detectives, Mapping Animal Movements, Only One
Ocean, Schoolyard Ecology
Benchmark SC.G.1.2.3: The student knows that green plants use carbon
dioxide, water, and sunlight energy to turn minerals and nutrients into
food for growth, maintenance, and reproduction.
Fifth Grade
1. knows that green plants use carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight energy
to turn minerals and nutrients into food for growth, maintenance, and
reproduction.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, Environmental Detectives
Benchmark SC.G.1.2.4: The student knows that some organisms decompose
dead plants and animals into simple minerals and nutrients for use by
living things and thereby recycle matter.
Fourth Grade
1. knows organisms that act as decomposers.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, On Sandy Shores, Schoolyard Ecology
2. understands the need for nutrients and minerals for living organisms.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, On Sandy Shores, Schoolyard Ecology
3. understands the process of decay (for example, the stages of decay,
the organisms that help the decay process, the nonliving factors that
influence the rate of decay, the products of decay).
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, On Sandy Shores
Benchmark SC.G.1.2.5: The student knows that animals eat plants or
other animals to acquire the energy they need for survival.
Third Grade
1. understands that energy is transferred to living organisms through
the food they eat.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, Buzzing a Hive, Schoolyard Ecology
2. knows examples of living things that are classified as producers,
consumers, carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats
Benchmark SC.G.1.2.6: The student knows that organisms are growing,
dying, and decaying and that new organisms are being produced from the
materials of dead organisms.
Fourth Grade
1. knows that organisms are growing, dying, and decaying and that new
organisms are being produced.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, On Sandy Shores
Benchmark SC.G.1.2.7: The student knows that variations in light,
water, temperature, and soil content are largely responsible for the
existence of different kinds of organisms and population densities in
an ecosystem.
Fourth Grade
1. knows that variations in light, water, temperature, and soil content
are largely responsible for the existence of different kinds of organisms
and population densities in an ecosystem.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Schoolyard
Ecology
Standard 2: The student understands the consequences of using limited
natural resources.
Benchmark SC.G.2.2.1: The student knows that all living things must
compete for Earths limited resources; organisms best adapted to
compete for the available resources will be successful and pass their
adaptations (traits) to their offspring.
Third Grade
1. understands that plants and animals share and compete for limited
resources such as oxygen, water, food, and space.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, Buzzing a Hive, Schoolyard Ecology
Fourth Grade
1. knows the kinds of organisms that lived in the past and compares
them to existing species.
2. knows characteristics that allow members within a species to survive
and reproduce.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, On Sandy Shores, Schoolyard Ecology
Fifth Grade
1. knows that adaptations to their environment may increase the survival
of a species.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Animals
in Action, Aquatic Habitats, Environmental Detectives, Mapping Animal
Movements, Only One Ocean, Schoolyard Ecology
Benchmark SC.G.2.2.2: The student knows that the size of a population
is dependent upon the available resources within its community.
Third Grade
1. knows that the size of a population is dependent upon the available
resources within its community.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, Schoolyard Ecology
Benchmark SC.G.2.2.3: The student understands that changes in
the habitat of an organism may be beneficial or harmful.
Fourth Grade
1. understands patterns of interdependency in ecological systems.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, On Sandy Shores
2. understands that what benefits one organism may be harmful to other
organisms.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats
1. understands that changes in an ecological system usually affect the
whole system.
Appropriate GEMS Teacher Guides: Aquatic
Habitats, On Sandy Shores
|