Rainforest Station
Rainforest Curriculum
The RainBird Rainforest Learning Center
The Rain Bird Rainforest Learning Center at BioTrek is a greenhouse that maintains tropical conditions for our rainforest plants and animals. This stop emphasizes plant adaptations and plant-animal interactions that make the world’s rainforests a valuable resource.
The standards that may be covered include:| Subject | No. | Standard |
|---|---|---|
|
Life Sciences |
2a |
Students know how to observe and describe similarities and differences in the appearance and behavior of plants and animals (e.g., seed-bearing plants, birds, fish, insects). |
|
Earth Sciences |
3b |
Students know changes in weather occur from day to day and across seasons, affecting Earth and its inhabitants. |
|
3c |
Students know how to identify resources from Earth that are used in everyday life and understand that many resources can be conserved. |
|
|
Physical Sciences |
1a |
Students know objects can be described in terms of the materials they are made of (e.g., clay, cloth, paper) and their physical properties (e.g., color, size, shape, weight, texture, flexibility, attraction to magnets, floating, sinking). |
| Subject | No. | Standard |
|---|---|---|
|
Life Sciences |
2b |
Students know different plants and animals inhabit different kinds of environments and have external features that help them thrive in different kinds of places. |
|
2c |
Students know animals eat plants or other animals for food and may also use plants or even other animals for shelter and nesting. |
|
|
Earth Sciences |
3b |
Students know that the weather changes from day to day but that trends in temperature or of rain (or snow) tend to be predictable during a season. |
|
3c |
Students know the sun warms the land, air, and water. |
| Subject | No. | Standard |
|---|---|---|
|
Life Sciences |
2a |
Students know that organisms reproduce offspring of their own kind and that the offspring resemble their parents and one another. |
|
2c |
Students know many characteristics of an organism are inherited from the parents. Some characteristics are caused or influenced by the environment. |
|
|
2d |
Students know there is variation among individuals of one kind within a population. |
| Subject | No. | Standard |
|---|---|---|
|
Physical Sciences |
1c |
Students know machines and living things convert stored energy to motion and heat. |
| Subject | No. | Standard |
|---|---|---|
|
Life Sciences
|
2b |
Students know producers and consumers (herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, and decomposers) are related in food chains and food webs and may compete with each other for resources in an ecosystem. |
|
2c |
Students know decomposers, including many fungi, insects, and microorganisms, recycle matter from dead plants and animals. |
|
|
3d |
Students know that most microorganisms do not cause disease and that many are beneficial. |
| Subject | No. | Standard |
|---|---|---|
|
Life Sciences |
5a |
Students know energy entering ecosystems as sunlight is transferred by producers into chemical energy through photosynthesis and then from organism to organism through food webs. |
|
5b |
Students know matter is transferred over time from one organism to others in the food web and between organisms and the physical environment. |
|
|
5c |
Students know populations of organisms can be categorized by the functions they serve in an ecosystem. |
|
|
5d |
Students know different kinds of organisms may play similar ecological roles in similar biomes. |
|
|
5e |
Students know the number and types of organisms an ecosystem can support depends on the resources available and on abiotic factors, such as quantities of light and water, a range of temperatures, and soil composition. |
|
|
Earth Resources
|
6a |
Students know the utility of energy sources is determined by factors that are involved in converting these sources to useful forms and the consequences of the conversion process. |
|
6b |
Students know different natural energy and material resources, including air, soil, rocks, minerals, petroleum, fresh water, wildlife, and forests, and know how to classify them as renewable or nonrenewable. |
|
|
6c |
Students know the natural origin of the materials used to make common objects. |
| Subject | No. | Standard |
|---|---|---|
|
Life Sciences |
3a |
Students know both genetic variation and environmental factors are causes of evolution and diversity of organisms. |
|
3e |
Students know that extinction of a species occurs when the environment changes and the adaptive characteristics of a species are insufficient for its survival. |
|
|
4e |
Students know fossils provide evidence of how life and environmental conditions have changed. |
|
|
4f |
Students know how movements of Earth’’s continental and oceanic plates through time, with associated changes in climate and geographic connections, have affected the past and present distribution of organisms. |
|
|
5a |
Students know plants and animals have levels of organization for structure and function, including cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, and the whole organism. |
|
|
5b |
Students know organ systems function because of the contributions of individual organs, tissues, and cells. The failure of any part can affect the entire system. |
|
|
5f |
Students know the structures and processes by which flowering plants generate pollen, ovules, seeds, and fruit. |
| Subject | No. | Standard |
|---|---|---|
|
Earth Sciences |
5e |
Students know charged particles are sources of electric fields and are subject to the forces of the electric fields from other charges. |