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4th grade · Science · Unit 1 of 8

Sense & Respond

How living things react

What your child practices

How people, animals and plants sense and respond to their environment: the nervous system, reflexes, special animal senses and plant responses to light, gravity and touch.

Alaska content standards learning standard: 4-LS1-1; 4-LS1-2 · how living things sense their surroundings and respond

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Your senses notice things: eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin.
  2. Nerves carry a message to your brain. Your brain decides, then your muscles move.
  3. A reflex is extra fast: the message goes to your spinal cord and straight back.
  4. Some animals have special senses, like bats hearing echoes or sharks sensing electric signals.

Example: You smell smoke. What happens first? Something must notice the smoke before your brain can act. Your nose senses the smell, then nerves carry the message to your brain. Answer: your nose senses the smoke

Sense & Respond in Alaska

In the Alaska content standards, this is unit 1 of 8 in 4th grade Science, before Light.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Alaska Department of Education and Early Development

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    The school bell rings. Put the steps of your response in order.

    • 👂Your ears sense the sound
    • 🧠Your brain decides what to do
    • 🏃Your muscles move you to line up
    • ⚡Nerves carry a message to your brain

  2. Question 2

    Something in the environment that a living thing reacts to is called a…

    📢
    • habitat
    • response
    • fossil
    • stimulus

  3. Question 3

    Salmon swim back to the stream where they hatched. Which sense helps them find it?

    🐟
    • 👅taste
    • 👃smell
    • 👀sight
    • 👂hearing

  4. Question 4

    You walk out of a dark room into bright sunshine. What do your pupils do?

    👀
    • They get smaller
    • They change color
    • They stay exactly the same
    • They get bigger

  5. Question 5

    Your nervous system is made of your brain, your spinal cord and your…

    🧠
    • muscles
    • nerves
    • teeth
    • bones

  6. Question 6

    Many trees drop their leaves in autumn. What are they responding to?

    🍂
    • Longer, warmer days
    • Shorter days and colder weather
    • People raking the yard
    • Birds singing in the branches

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