4th Grade - ACT Aspire -Structure and Function
Name_____________________________
Structures for Survival
All living things have structures that help them survive in their environment. Living
things need energy from food to survive. They have structures that help them get this
energy. You use your hands to pick up food and put it in your mouth. You use your jaw
and teeth to chew the food into small pieces. Then, structures inside your body digest
the food. Other animals may use claws or teeth to capture and kill their prey before
eating it. They may rely on their legs to chase after their prey. Fish use fins to move
through water to find food. Elephants use their trunks to pull grasses out of the ground
to eat. Plants do not move around the same way that animals do, so plants use special
structures to make their own food. Plants then use the food they make for energy to
live and grow.
Birds have many structures that help them get what they need to survive. Feathers are
an important structure for birds. Without feathers, birds cannot fly, no matter how light
their bodies. The shape of a beak helps a bird get its food. For example, finches eat
mostly seeds. Their beaks are made for cracking the shells of seeds. Herons’ long,
sharp beaks are perfect for spearing fish. Hummingbirds put their long, narrow beaks
into flowers to gather nectar. Webbed feet help ducks and other water birds move
around in the water.
Figure 1:
[Developed for instructional purposes only by NWA Science Curriculum Specialists, 2016]
4th Grade - ACT Aspire -Structure and Function
Name_____________________________
Investigating Different Beak Structures
A group of students was interested to see if different beaks affected what shape of food
a bird might catch. The students used chopsticks, spoons, and tweezers to represent
different types of beaks. The students measured how many sticks, rocks, and metal
rings each of the different beak models could pick up in a minute. Their results are in
the table below.
Table 1:
Amount of Each Kind of Item Gathered by Each Beak Model
Beak Model
Sticks
Rocks
Metal Rings
Chopsticks
2
7
25
Spoon
4
16
3
Tweezers
18
6
12
[Developed for instructional purposes only by NWA Science Curriculum Specialists, 2016]
4th Grade - ACT Aspire -Structure and Function
Name_____________________________
1. A bird has a foot like the one in the picture.
In what type of environment would you
expect to find this bird?
a. desert
b. lake
c. meadow
d. rainforest
2. Explain how that foot structure in question 1
is helpful in the environment you chose using information from the passage and
Figure 1.
3. An owl, a type of bird, catches mice to eat. A finch, another type of bird, eats
seeds. Choose the statement below that best describes whether you would
expect the beaks to look alike or different and why.
a. Alike because all beaks look the same.
b. Alike because both birds eat with beaks.
c. Different because the birds are different sizes.
d. Different because the birds eat different things.
[Developed for instructional purposes only by NWA Science Curriculum Specialists, 2016]
4th Grade - ACT Aspire -Structure and Function
Name_____________________________
4. Look at Table 1. Which graph represents how many of each item the chopsticks
were able to collect?
a.
b.
c.
d.
5. Look at Table 1. How many more total items did the tweezers collect than the
spoon?
a. 12
b. 13
c. 23
[Developed for instructional purposes only by NWA Science Curriculum Specialists, 2016]
4th Grade - ACT Aspire -Structure and Function
Name_____________________________
d. 36
6. A student stated that each of the beak models was more suited to picking up one
type of item than another. Does the information in Table 1 support this
statement?
a. No, because the spoon picked up fewer items overall than the chopsticks
and the tweezers.
b. No, because the tweezers picked up more total items than the chopsticks
or the spoon.
c. Yes, because the chopsticks picked up the most rings, the spoons picked
up the most rocks, and the tweezers picked up the most sticks.
d. Yes, because the tweezers picked up more total items than the spoon or
the chopsticks.
[Developed for instructional purposes only by NWA Science Curriculum Specialists, 2016]