Desert Discoveries
Built for the Desert
The saguaro cactus has an amazing ability to survive in a harsh environment. Learners identify the many adaptations for desert life that the saguaro employs. They look at each part of the saguaro and determine what role it plays in the...
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What Plants Need in Order to Survive and Grow: Air
Students conduct an experiment to determine whether plants need air in order to survive and grow. They discuss natural resources, analyze slides, and observe and record data from the experiment.
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The Desert Alphabet Book
Students use a book to discover an interesting fact from the desert using each letter of the alphabet. Using a United States map, they identify the meanings of symbols and locate deserts within the U.S. In groups, they participate in...
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Opening Doors to Social Studies with Children's Literature: The Desert Alphabet Book
Students explore the geography of the United States. In this social studies lesson plan, students identify the major deserts on a map of the United States.
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Deserts Around the World
Second graders explore the deserts around the world. They use a map and locate America on the map. Students discuss and identify the characteristics of deserts and differentiate the meanings of the word desert and dessert. Students...
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Sonoran Desert
In this Sonoran Desert worksheet, students read and analyze a letter that Jeremy wrote to his grandmother and then complete the picture that follows using information about the desert they learned from the letter.
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Desert Views - First Impressions: Travelers on the Gila Trail
Students draw animals and plants that are described to them as they read passages of people who traveled across the Gila Trail in the Southwest. In this Gila Trail lesson plan, students also write a letter describing a plant or animal in...
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Desert Water Keepers
Third graders identify ways that cactus plants survive in the desert. They distinguish between water acquisition and water conservation and create their own plant that could survive in a desert climate.
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A Virtual Museum of the Mojave Desert
Students study deserts and the plants, animals, and people who inhabit them. In groups, they create their own stories about the inhabitants of the Mojave desert.
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Seed Plants: Angiosperms
Middle schoolers describe flowering plants and see why angiosperms are the most successful plants. In this angiosperms activity students identify angiosperms and explain how they reproduce.
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Creating a Pollinator Garden
Students build a pollination garden. In this pollination lesson, students read directions and build a pollinator garden that will produce flowering plants for pollinator organisms to use in pollination of other plants.
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Investigation 1 - Wetlands, Forests & Deserts
Fourth graders examine surface terrain and how plants and animals are affected by the temperatures and precipitation that elevation and terrain creates. Then students predict what type of environment plants and animals live in.
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Plants and Ecosystems
The relationships within and between ecosystems can be explored. after examining an area for living and non-living things students complete the same examination in the forest ecosystem. Students identify abiotic and biotic elements in an...
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Taking Count of Biodiversity
Here is a well-designed activity on biodiversity that should intrigue your charges. In it, pupils compare a natural desert area to a school field to see how habitat destruction affects species diversity. Groups set up transects and...
Desert Discoveries
Who Depends on the Saguaro?
Young scientists design a picture of a saguaro cactus that shows the cactus and some of the animals and plants that interact with it. There are many of these special relationships between plants and animals of the Sonoran Desert. Your...
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You Can Depend On me
Discover the natural beauty of California. With a conservation bent, this activity delves into some of the attributes that make this state unique. Learners discuss Yosemite and the forest habitat. They focus on the things plants and...
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Roxaboxen
Third graders discuss the story "Roxaboxen." In this reading comprehension lesson plan, 3rd graders discover new vocabulary words, discuss the story using story mapping, and take a reading test. Students investigate safety in the desert...
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Keys and Classifying
Students classify plants and animals. In this organisms instructional activity, students define classification and sort various objects according to its attributes. Students then research wildlife of Utah and group the organisms into...
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Day and Night in the Desert
Students illustrate scenes showing day and nighttime activities in the desert. They include plant and animal life including predators and prey.
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Biomes and Plant Growth
Seventh graders design four biomes models and plant three types of seeds in them to observe growth. In groups for each type of biome, they predict the seeds' growth in each of the settings. Students follow the conditions on a biome chart...
Desert Discovery
Saguaro Parts
Young biologists identify the basic structures of a saguaro cactus. They study the functions of each of the structures, and label them on a picture of a saguaro cactus embedded in the plan. This simple, and easy-to-implement...
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Classifying Conundrum
Fourth graders identify plant characteristics from different environments and communicate that information in different ways. They use a simple scheme to classify Utah plants and animals and make observations and record them in a...
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Baa, Ram, Ewe....Sheep Tales
Young scholars compare real and make believe animal behaviors by drawing and comparing them. In this real and make believe animals lesson plan, students compare the animal behaviors, express how colors create a mood in artwork, and...
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The Living Environment
Fourth graders make a chart of animals and plants that live in either the desert, the ocean, or the tundra. In this environment lesson plan, 4th graders work in groups to discover characteristics needed for these animals to live in that...