Science topics · Grades 1–6
Life Science Lessons & Worksheets
Explore how plants and animals grow, survive, and interact with the world around them. Find ready-to-teach life science lessons for Grades 1–6.
Choose your grade
Jump straight to the lessons that fit your class.
Classroom idea: What helps living things grow and survive?
Start with a real plant, an animal photograph, or an outdoor observation. Ask students what evidence they can notice before they explain an idea.
Invite students to record what they see, compare organisms, and use evidence to support their thinking.
Grade 1 · Life Science
Grade 1 lessons
Observe plants, animals, and the structures that help them meet their needs.
Animal Structures
Animal Body Parts & Functions
Observe external animal parts, connect each structure to a useful function, gather simple evidence, and use one animal idea in a simple design.
Families & Traits
Young Plants & Animals: Like Their Parents
Look closely at animal and plant families. Young living things can share traits with their parents and still be different in some ways.
Plant Structures
Plant Parts & Their Jobs: Roots, Stems, Leaves & Flowers
Look closely at a whole plant, connect roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruits to useful jobs, then use observations from a simple stem-water investigation as evidence.
Plant Responses
Plants Respond to Light: Which Way Will a Plant Grow?
Use a sequence of plant observations to notice that a growing plant can bend toward a light source, then plan a simple fair test that changes only the direction of light.
Animal Survival
Camouflage & Animal Survival: How Colors and Patterns Help Animals Hide
Compare animals with their surroundings, look for color and pattern matches, and use evidence from a simple spotting test to explain how camouflage can make an animal harder to see.
Animal Activity Patterns
Nocturnal & Diurnal Animals: Who Is Active When?
Use repeated picture observations to compare animals active mostly in daylight with animals active mostly at night, then use time-of-day evidence to identify an activity pattern.
Plants and Patterns
Seed to Seedling: How Germination Begins
Observe bean seeds over several days, compare damp and dry setups, and use visible changes to explain what helps germination begin.
Animals and Evidence
Animal Tracks & Signs: What Clues Show an Animal Was Here?
Study safe prepared clues such as tracks, feathers, feeding marks, and nests to make careful claims about animal activity without needing to see the animal.
Families & Traits
How Parents and Young Help Each Other
Use picture and text media to find patterns in observable behaviors between animal parents and young.
Animal Structures
The Five Senses: How We Observe the World
Use sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste as safe sources of information, and practice telling an observation from a guess.
Living Things
Living vs. Nonliving Things
Compare familiar examples and use patterns of needs, growth, and reproduction to tell living things from nonliving things without relying on movement alone.
Nature-Inspired Design
Biomimicry: Design Like Plants & Animals
Notice how plant and animal structures do useful jobs. Then use one useful job to build and test a simple solution.
Grade 2 · Life Science
Grade 2 lessons
Explore what living things need and how they interact with habitats.
Birds and Habitats
Design a Bird-Friendly Habitat
Design a safer schoolyard habitat for visiting birds by matching food, clean water, plant cover, nesting space and window safety to evidence.
Plant Growth
What Do Plants Need to Grow?
Plan and carry out a simple investigation to determine whether plants need sunlight and water to grow.
Plants & Animals
Pollination & Seed Dispersal
Observe what moves, test a seed model, and explain how pollen and seeds travel in different ways.
Living Things Around Us
Habitats & Biodiversity
Observe two habitat scenes, record the different kinds of plants and animals you find, and compare the variety shown by the two records.
Grade 3 · Life Science
Grade 3 lessons
Compare life cycles, inherited traits, and adaptations.
Life Cycles
Animal & Plant Life Cycles
Build and compare life-cycle models to explain how organisms begin life, grow and change, reproduce, and eventually die while offspring begin a new generation.
Traits
Inherited Traits & Variation
Use plant and animal data to find inherited-trait patterns, variation among similar organisms, and evidence that environmental conditions can influence how traits develop.
Survival & Environment
Adaptations & Survival in Habitats
Use repeated camouflage data and organism-needs evidence to build a calibrated habitat-survival argument.
Animal Behavior
Why Animals Live in Groups
Analyze repeated observations and build an argument about how some animal groups can help members survive.
Animal Diversity
Animal Classification: Vertebrates & Invertebrates
Use body-structure evidence to classify animals as vertebrates or invertebrates and then compare familiar groups such as mammals, birds, insects, arachnids, mollusks, and crustaceans.
Ecosystems and Survival
Changing Habitats: When a Need Is Missing
Use organism-and-resource evidence to explain why the same habitat change can help some organisms, challenge others, and make survival impossible for others.
Grade 4 · Life Science
Grade 4 lessons
Investigate how organisms sense, respond, and interact.
Animal Behavior
Instinct vs. Learned Behavior: How Animals Respond
Compare animal behaviors that appear without training with behaviors shaped by experience, practice, or learning.
Structure & Function
Plant & Animal Structures: Form Fits Function
Use diagrams and evidence to explain how internal and external structures help plants and animals survive, grow, behave, and reproduce.
Information Processing
Senses, Brain & Responses
Construct and repair visual and sound information-pathway models.
Ecosystem Connections
Ecosystem Modeling: What Happens When One Population Changes?
Build and revise a simple ecosystem model, then use evidence to predict how a change in one population can affect connected organisms.
Grade 5 · Life Science
Grade 5 lessons
Connect matter, energy, and living systems.
Matter and Energy in Ecosystems
Microorganisms: Helpful, Harmful & Decomposers
Use microscope images, role evidence, and decomposition models to compare bacteria, yeast, molds, and other microorganisms as decomposers, helpful organisms, or harmful organisms.
Matter & Energy in Living Things
Where Does Plant Growth Come From?
Use mass evidence and models to argue that plant-growth materials come chiefly from air and water.
Matter and Energy in Ecosystems
Food Webs: Matter & Energy in Ecosystems
Build and read food webs to trace how matter and food energy move through an ecosystem. Use arrows carefully and make predictions from direct feeding relationships.
Body Structures & Movement
Finger & Muscle Model: How Do Pulling Structures Move Joints?
Build and test a finger model to explain how bones, joints, tendons, and muscles work together to produce bending and straightening.
Grade 6 · Life Science
Grade 6 lessons
Explore cells, body systems, heredity, and ecosystems.
Cells and Organization
Cell Structure & Function
Use microscope observations and cell models to explain how cell structures support the jobs a cell must do, then compare evidence from plant and animal cells.
Cells & Organization
Human Body Systems: Cells to Organ Systems
Use organization models and prepared data to explain how cells form tissues and organs and how human body subsystems interact.
Ecosystem Dynamics
Ecosystem Interactions & Resource Availability
Analyze aligned organism, resource, and population records while keeping explanations calibrated to the evidence.
Matter & Energy in Living Things
Inside Cells: Food Molecules & Usable Energy
Use a cell-level particle model to explain how organisms rearrange food matter and transfer energy for life processes without creating atoms or energy.
Heredity & Variation
DNA, Genes & Chromosomes: How Traits Are Inherited
Model how genes are organized on chromosomes, compare sexual and asexual inheritance, and explain conceptually how mutations can alter proteins and affect traits.
Evolution & Variation
Natural Selection: Why Some Traits Become More Common
Investigate how inherited variation can affect the chance of surviving and reproducing in a particular environment, using fictional population evidence rather than an individual choosing to change.
Ecosystems & Interdependence
Ecosystem Relationships: Competition, Predation & Mutualism
Compare evidence from woodland, tide-pool and desert examples to identify and predict recurring ecological interaction patterns across different ecosystems.