The Standards

Primary School (K-2)

Adult plants and animals can have young. In many kinds of animals, parents and the offspring themselves engage in behaviors that help the offspring to survive.

Elementary School (3-5)

Reproduction is essential to the continued existence of every kind of organism. Plants and animals have unique and diverse life cycles.

Middle School (6-8)

Organisms reproduce, either sexually or asexually, and transfer their genetic information to their offspring.

Animals engage in characteristic behaviors that increase the odds of reproduction.

Plants reproduce in a variety of ways, sometimes depending on animal behavior and specialized features for reproduction.

Genetic factors as well as local conditions affect the growth of the adult plant.

High School (9-12)

In multicellular organisms individual cells grow and then divide via a process called mitosis, thereby allowing the organism to grow. The organism begins as a single cell (fertilized egg) that divides successively to produce many cells, with each parent cell passing identical genetic material (two variants of each chromosome pair) to both daughter cells. Cellular division and differentiation produce and maintain a complex organism, composed of systems of tissues and organs that work together to meet the needs of the whole organism.