Unit 01 · Characteristics & Needs of Living Things
This unit asks a question that sounds easy until you try to answer it: what makes something alive? You’ll compare living things, once-living things, and things that were never alive, and build a checklist of the traits every living thing shares — using energy, growing, responding to the world around them, and reproducing. You’ll also learn what living things need to stay alive. Mastery means you can look at something new and give evidence for whether it’s living, not just a guess.
| Criterion | Not yet | Approaching | Mastered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Living, non-living & once-living | Sorts things as living or not by a single clue, like “it moves.” | Sorts most things correctly but is stumped by tricky cases like seeds or a fallen log. | Sorts living, once-living, and never-living things and backs up each call with more than one trait. |
| The traits all living things share | Can name one or two traits but leaves out most. | Lists the traits but can’t point them out in a real organism. | Names the shared traits — using energy, growing, responding, reproducing — and finds each one in a living thing they observe. |
| What living things need to survive | Thinks living things only need food. | Lists needs but mixes up needs (water, air, energy, space) with wants. | Explains what living things need and predicts what happens when one need is missing. |
| Stimulus & response | Doesn’t connect a change in the surroundings to how a living thing reacts. | Gives one example of a response but can’t explain why it helps the organism. | Identifies a stimulus and the response, and explains how reacting helps the living thing survive. |
| Lab technique (observing & recording) | Rushes the observation or writes down guesses instead of what is seen. | Observes carefully but records vaguely or skips the hand lens. | Uses a hand lens well, records clear observations in words and labeled sketches, and separates what they saw from what they think. |
| Integration (cross-domain) | Treats the science as isolated facts; makes no cross-domain connection. | Names a link to history, reading, or writing but cannot defend why it matters. | Connects the unit to its anchor across History · Reading · Writing (plus chosen electives) and defends why the connection matters. |
“The seed looks dead because it isn’t moving, but it’s alive. Give it water, air, and warmth and it grows into a plant — it uses energy, it responds, and it can make more plants. A rock can’t do any of that, so a rock was never alive.”
“It’s alive if it moves… so the seed isn’t alive, and I guess the rock might be?”
You demonstrate this unit through observation labs — comparing living and non-living things and watching what organisms need — plus short oral checks where you explain your reasoning aloud, not a multiple-choice test. A criterion counts as mastered only when you can both make the observation and explain the biology behind it. Mastery is demonstrated, not awarded.
A 5-page clipboard packet — unit overview, key terms, the mastery rubric, anchor examples, and a score sheet you can print and grade against.