Mission Library

Tackling Toxins
Changing the Environment
Grades K-1

The Mission
21 min

Storyline

When Moodoo contaminated the water of Tellenor, the crew will identify how living things are affected and will implement a solution to address the problem.

When the crew arrives at Tellenor, they'll investigate how plants and animals have adapted to the contaminated water and changed their environment accordingly. They'll discover that plants grow longer roots and animals move to cleaner water sources and collect rainwater. The crew will learn about cause and effect relationships and consider solutions like "water catchers" and "water cleaners." They'll decide that using a combination of both is the best way to help everyone on Tellenor. After implementing the solution, they'll send Moodoo and his ships away, ensuring a happy, healthy future for Tellenor's inhabitants.

3-Dimensional Science

Phenomenon

Water has been contaminated, which is causing problems for living things.

Science and Engineering Practices

Engaging in Argument from Evidence

  • Identify arguments that are supported by evidence.

  • Distingush between explanations that account for all gathered evidence and those that do not.

  • Analyze why some evidence is relevant to a scientific question and some is not.

  • Listen actively to arguments to indicate agreement or disagreement based on evidence, and/or to retell the main points of the argument.

  • Construct an argument with evidence to support a claim.

  • Make a claim about the effectiveness of an object, tool, or solution that is supported by relevant evidence.

Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information

  • Read grade-appropriate texts and/or use media to obtain scientific and/or technical information to determine patterns in and/or evidence about the natural and designed world(s).

  • Describe how specific images (e.g., a diagram showing how a machine works) support a scientific or engineering idea.

  • Obtain information using various texts, text features (e.g., headings, tables of contents, glossaries, electronic menus, icons) and other media that will be useful in answering a scientific question and/or supporting a scientific claim.

  • Communicate information or design ideas and/or solutions with others in oral and/or written forms using models, drawings, writing, or numbers that provide detail about scientific ideas, practices, and/or design ideas.

Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions

  • Make observations (firsthand or from media) to construct an evidence-based account for natural phenomena.

  • Generate and/or compare multiple solutions to a problem.

Crosscutting Concepts

Cause and Effect

  • Students learn that events have causes that generate observable patterns. They design simple tests to gather evidence to support or refute their own ideas about causes.

Systems and System Models

  • Students understand objects and organisms can be described in terms of their parts; and systems in the natural and designed world have parts that work together.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

ESS2.E: Biogeology

  • Plants and animals can change their environment. Living things need water, air, and resources from the land, and they live in places that have the things they need. Humans use natural resources for everything they do.

ESS3.C: Human Impacts on Earth Systems

  • Things people do can affect the environment but they can make choices to reduce their impacts.

ETS1.B: Developing Possible Solutions

  • Designs can be conveyed through sketches, drawings, or physical models. These representations are useful in communicating ideas for a problem’s solutions to other people. To design something complicated, one may need to break the problem into parts and attend to each part separately but must then bring the parts together to test the overall plan.

Resources
Targeted Standards
Timeline
Skills in Action