Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits

  1. Home
  2. The Basics
  3. Getting There
  4. Additional Activities
  5. Classroom Applications
  6. Helpful Hints
Home > Classroom Applications

Classroom Applications

See http://www.tarpits.org/education/teachers.html for various study guides and teacher resources prior to your visit.

California Standards

CA- California K-12 Academic Content Standards
Subject: History & Social Science
Grade: Grade Three
Area: Continuity and ChangeStudents in grade three learn more about our connections to the past and the ways in which particularly local, but also regional and national, government and traditions have developed and left their marks on current society, providing common memories. Emphasis is on the physical and cultural landscape of California, including the study of American Indians, the subsequent arrival of immigrants, and the impact they have had in forming the character of our contemporary society.
Sub-Strand 3.1: Students describe the physical and human geography and use maps, tables, graphs, photographs, and charts to organize information about people, places, and environments in a spatial context.
Standard 1: Identify geographical features in their local region (e.g., deserts, mountains, valleys, hills, coastal areas, oceans, lakes).
Standard 2: Trace the ways in which people have used the resources of the local region and modified the physical environment (e.g., a dam constructed upstream changed a river or coastline).
Grade: Grade Six
Area: World History and Geography: Ancient CivilizationsStudents in grade six expand their understanding of history by studying the people and events that ushered in the dawn of the major Western and non-Western ancient civilizations. Geography is of special significance in the development of the human story. Continued emphasis is placed on the everyday lives, problems, and accomplishments of people, their role in developing social, economic, and political structures, as well as in establishing and spreading ideas that helped transform the world forever. Students develop higher levels of critical thinking by considering why civilizations developed where and when they did, why they became dominant, and why they declined. Students analyze the interactions among the various cultures, emphasizing their enduring contributions and the link, despite time, between the contemporary and ancient worlds.
Sub-Strand 6.1: Students describe what is known through archaeological studies of the early physical and cultural development of humankind from the Paleolithic era to the agricultural revolution.
Standard 3: Discuss the climatic changes and human modifications of the physical environment that gave rise to the domestication of plants and animals and new sources of clothing and shelter.
Subject: Science
Grade: Grade Two
Area: Earth Sciences
Sub-Strand 3: Earth is made of materials that have distinct properties and provide resources for human activities. As a basis for understanding this concept:
Standard d: Students know that fossils provide evidence about the plants and animals that lived long ago and that scientists learn about the past history of Earth by studying fossils.
Standard e: Students know rock, water, plants, and soil provide many resources, including food, fuel, and building materials, that humans use.
Grade: Grade Three
Area: Life Sciences
Sub-Strand 3: Adaptations in physical structure or behavior may improve an organism’s chance for survival. As a basis for understanding this concept:
Standard d: Students know when the environment changes, some plants and animals survive and reproduce; others die or move to new locations.
Standard e: Students know that some kinds of organisms that once lived on Earth have completely disappeared and that some of those resembled others that are alive today.
Grade: Grade Four
Area: Life Sciences
Sub-Strand 3: Living organisms depend on one another and on their environment for survival. As a basis for understanding this concept:
Standard a: Students know ecosystems can be characterized by their living and nonliving components.
Standard b: Students know that in any particular environment, some kinds of plants and animals survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all.
Grade: Grade Seven
Area: Focus on Life Science
Sub-Strand: Evolution
Concept 3: Biological evolution accounts for the diversity of species developed through gradual processes over many generations. As a basis for understanding this concept:
Standard c: Students know how independent lines of evidence from geology, fossils, and comparative anatomy provide the bases for the theory of evolution.
Standard d: Students know how to construct a simple branching diagram to classify living groups of organisms by shared derived characteristics and how to expand the diagram to include fossil organisms.
Sub-Strand: Earth and Life History (Earth Science)
Concept 4: Evidence from rocks allows us to understand the evolution of life on Earth. As a basis for understanding this concept:
Standard a: Students know Earth processes today are similar to those that occurred in the past and slow geologic processes have large cumulative effects over long periods of time.
Standard e: Students know fossils provide evidence of how life and environmental conditions have changed.
Standard f: Students know how movements of Earth’s continental and oceanic plates through time, with associated changes in climate and geographic connections, have affected the past and present distribution of organisms.
Grade: Grades Nine Through TwelveStandards that all students are expected to achieve in the course of their studies are unmarked. Standards that all students should have the opportunity to learn are marked with an asterisk (*).
Area: Biology/Life Sciences
Sub-Strand: Ecology
Concept 6: Stability in an ecosystem is a balance between competing effects. As a basis for understanding this concept:
Standard b: Students know how to analyze changes in an ecosystem resulting from changes in climate, human activity, introduction of nonnative species, or changes in population size.
Standard d: Students know how water, carbon, and nitrogen cycle between abiotic resources and organic matter in the ecosystem and how oxygen cycles through photosyn-thesis and respiration.
Sub-Strand: Evolution
Concept 8: Evolution is the result of genetic changes that occur in constantly changing environments. As a basis for understanding this concept:
Standard e: Students know how to analyze fossil evidence with regard to biological diversity, episodic speciation, and mass extinction.
Area: Earth Sciences
Sub-Strand: Biogeochemical Cycles
Concept 7: Each element on Earth moves among reservoirs, which exist in the solid earth, in oceans, in the atmosphere, and within and among organisms as part of biogeochemical cycles. As a basis for understanding this concept:
Standard b: Students know the global carbon cycle: the different physical and chemical forms of carbon in the atmosphere, oceans, biomass, fossil fuels, and the movement of carbon among these reservoirs.
Standard c: Students know the movement of matter among reservoirs is driven by Earth’s internal and external sources of energy.
Sub-Strand: California Geology
Concept 9: The geology of California underlies the state’s wealth of natural resources as well as its natural hazards. As a basis for understanding this concept:
Standard b: Students know the principal natural hazards in different California regions and the geologic basis of those hazards.
Author: Karen Browne
Last modified: 6/4/2008 9:16 PM (EST)