Organism Structures & Functions Activity: 8 Hands-On Stations for Teaching How Body Parts Help Organisms Survive (TEKS 5.13A)

Chris Kesler · 8 min read

Hand a 5th grader a toothpick and ask them to pick up a gummy worm. Easy. Now ask them to pick up a goldfish cracker with the same toothpick. Suddenly impossible. Pelicans don't fish with toothpicks. They have a giant scoop-shaped beak with a throat pouch for a reason. Hummingbirds don't dive for fish. Their needle-thin beak is built for a totally different job. The structure of the body part determines what job it can do.

That's TEKS 5.13A. It asks 5th graders to investigate the structures and functions of organisms and explain how those structures help the organism survive in its environment. They have to use the words "structure," "function," and "behavior" correctly, and tell the difference between them.

The Organism Structures & Functions Station Lab for TEKS 5.13A turns that abstract idea into a 30-second timed challenge. Kids pick one tool (toothpick, clothespin, or straw) and try to "feed" themselves on M&Ms, gummy worms, and goldfish crackers. Some tools win on candy and lose on crackers. Then they study real desert, ocean, and forest organisms and sort pelicans, octopuses, sea otters, and crocodiles by their structure-function match.

⏱ 1–2 class periods 📓 5th Grade Science 🧪 TEKS 5.13A 🎯 Built-in differentiation 💻 Print or Digital

8 hands-on stations for teaching organism structures and functions

A station lab is a student-led activity where small groups rotate through 8 stations (plus a 9th challenge station for early finishers) at their own pace during one to two class periods. You become a facilitator instead of a lecturer. You walk around, spot-check, and break misconceptions while kids work through the rotation.

The Organism Structures & Functions Station Lab has four input stations (where students take in new information on what structures, functions, and behaviors actually are) and four output stations (where they show what they learned). Here's what's at each one.

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4 input stations: how students learn organism structures and functions

🎬 Watch It! —

A short YouTube video introduces structures and functions through desert organisms. Three questions on the answer sheet check whether students caught the big ideas: what structure does a cactus have to store water and how it works, one structure that helps jackrabbits survive in the hot desert, and what jackrabbits do during the day and why. The desert framing sets up the Research It! station perfectly.

📖 Read It! —

A one-page passage called "Structures and Behaviors" starts with a comparison to a television (a structure made of plastic, glass, and metal with the function of entertaining). Then it walks through real organisms: frogs (eyes, tongue, teeth, strong legs, wet skin), turtles (shell, legs, claws, tail), insects (wings for flying away from predators), snakes (scales), plants (wide leaves for absorbing sunlight), dogs (tongue for releasing heat). The structure-function-behavior distinction gets pulled apart carefully: a leg is a structure, jumping is a behavior, but digesting food is a function that isn't a behavior. Vocabulary is bolded throughout (organism, structures, function, behavior, survive). Three multiple-choice questions follow, plus the vocabulary section. Comes in two reading levels (Dependent and Modified) plus a Spanish version.

🔬 Explore It! —

This is the station kids will remember. Each student picks ONE tool: a toothpick, a clothespin, or a straw. Then they have 30 seconds to collect as many M&Ms as they can from a plate of 20, no fingers allowed. Reset, try again on 20 gummy worms. Reset, try one more time on 20 goldfish crackers. Each tool wins on some foods and fails on others. The reflection question asks them to explain why the tool helped or didn't, which is the structure-function connection in disguise. The clothespin kids dominate the M&M round; the straw kids do surprisingly well on the gummy worms (suction); the toothpick kids struggle with everything except spearing gummy worms.

💻 Research It! —

Nine reference cards organized by environment. Desert: Bactrian camel (two humps that store fat for energy), fennec fox (large ears that release heat), prickly pear cactus (waxy leaves that reduce water loss). Ocean: Portuguese man-o-war (stinging tentacles), hammerhead shark (flattened cephalofoil head for sensing prey), manta ray (wide fins for swimming). Forest: harpy eagle (massive talons for catching prey), strawberry poison dart frog (venom glands for protection), kapok tree (buttress roots for stability in shallow soil). Four questions ask students to explain why each set of structures matches its environment, including a closer where they have to explain why a rainforest frog and tree couldn't survive in a desert.

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4 output stations: how students show what they learned

📋 Organize It! —

A three-column card sort. Six organisms (pelican, crocodile, octopus, kelp, sea otter, and brain coral) get matched with their structure and their function. Pelican → large beak and throat pouch → scoops water to eat fish. Crocodile → unique head shape with raised eyes, ears, and nostrils → can hide most of its body underwater while still seeing, hearing, and smelling. Octopus → boneless body and high intelligence → squeezes into tight spaces and escapes predators. Kelp → root-like structures called holdfasts → anchors the kelp to the ocean floor so it can grow long. Sea otter → extremely thick fur → insulates from cold ocean water. Brain coral → hard calcium carbonate skeleton → protects the living polyps inside. Forces kids to match three pieces, not two, and shows them whether they can really see structure-function as one unit.

🎨 Illustrate It! —

Students draw a familiar organism that lives in their local ecosystem (a backyard squirrel, a robin, a magnolia tree, a fire ant — whatever their part of Texas has plenty of). After they draw it, they circle every structure that has a specialized function for survival and label both the structure and the function. This is the station where you can spot which kids really understand the concept and which kids are still labeling "eyes" without thinking about what eyes do. The local-ecosystem framing also brings the lab home, literally.

✍️ Write It! —

Three open-ended questions in complete sentences. First, how the structures of a shark help it survive in the ocean. Second, why zebras and lions in the same ecosystem have different structures (this is the predator-prey question hiding in plain sight). Third, why cactus spines as a protective structure are something a cactus actually needs. The zebra-lion question is the one to watch because it pushes students past "animals look different" to "different jobs need different bodies, even in the same place."

📝 Assess It! —

Three multiple-choice questions plus a fill-in-the-paragraph that uses the five Read It! vocabulary words (organism, structure, function, behavior, survive). The multiple choice asks them to identify which option is a structure (leaf vs. dancing vs. hunting vs. using tools), which is a behavior (a lion using its claw to hunt vs. claws themselves), and which is a function (using webbed feet to swim vs. having feet). The structure-vs-function-vs-behavior distinction is the trickiest part of 5.13A, and this assessment is the cleanest way to catch where the wires get crossed.

Bonus Challenge It! station for early finishers

🏆 Challenge It! —

Four optional extensions: create two themed bookmarks (one for "structures," one for "functions") with facts and examples, write a creative story from the point of view of an organism explaining how its structures helped on a grand adventure, draw a labeled organism and cut it into 12–15 puzzle pieces, or design a picture book for a beginning reader that teaches structures and functions with one picture and one fact per page. Requires teacher approval before they start.

How this fits into a complete Organism Structures & Functions unit

This Station Lab is the Explore day of our full Organism Structures & Functions Complete 5E Lesson for TEKS 5.13A. The complete two-week unit follows the 5E method of instruction and includes an Engage hook, the Organism Structures & Functions Station Lab for Explore, PowerPoint slides and interactive notebook pages for Explain, student choice projects to Elaborate, and an Evaluate assessment.

Most 5th-grade teachers grab the full 5E because the Station Lab lands hardest with the days around it. But if you just need a strong hands-on day on structures, functions, and how they help organisms survive, the Station Lab on its own does the job.

Two options

Organism Structures & Functions 5E Lesson cover

Full 5E Lesson $13.20 Get the 5E Lesson

Organism Structures & Functions Station Lab cover

Just the Station Lab $7.20 Get the Station Lab

Materials needed to teach organism structures and functions

Materials beyond what's in the download:

20 M&Ms, 20 gummy worms, and 20 goldfish crackers per group for the Explore It! station. One small bag of each food is plenty for an average class. If your school has a no-candy rule, swap M&Ms for raisins or dry cereal — the point is round-and-slippery, not the brand.
One toothpick, one clothespin, and one straw per student in the rotation (each student picks one tool to use across all three food rounds).
3 small paper plates per group for the three food rounds.
One timer per group (a phone or a kitchen timer works).
Colored pencils or markers for the Illustrate It! station.
Pencils and the printed answer sheets (included)
A device with internet for the Watch It! station

Standard covered: Texas TEKS 5.13A —

Investigate and explain how structures and functions of organisms enable them to survive in their environment.

See the full standard breakdown →

Grade level: 5th grade life science

Time: One to two class periods (45–110 minutes total). Plan for two periods the first time you run a station lab.

Common student misconceptions this lab fixes

"A structure and a behavior are basically the same thing. Hunting is a structure, right?"
This is the biggest 5th-grade pitfall on this standard. Kids hear "things an animal does" and don't separate body parts (structures) from actions (behaviors) from purposes (functions). The Read It! passage pulls them apart explicitly: a frog's legs are a structure, jumping is a behavior, moving is a function. The Assess It! station tests this directly with three multiple-choice questions: pick the structure (leaf vs. dancing), pick the behavior (a lion's claw vs. a lion using its claw to hunt), pick the function (a turtle having feet vs. using webbed feet to swim). By the end, kids can hold up a body part and answer all three: what is this (structure), what does it do (function), what action does the animal take with it (behavior).
"Animals choose their structures based on where they live. The camel decided to grow humps because of the desert."
5th graders often imagine organisms as little people who decide what features they need. The Research It! station works against this by showing structure-environment pairings as facts: the Bactrian camel has two humps that store fat for energy, the fennec fox has large ears that release heat, the prickly pear cactus has waxy leaves that reduce water loss. None of those organisms "decided" anything. They have those structures, and the structures happen to work in that environment. Question 4 makes the inverse explicit: the rainforest frog and kapok tree couldn't survive in a desert — not because they didn't choose the desert, but because their structures don't match it. The connection lands as a how-fits-the-environment story, not a how-the-animal-chose story.
"All animals in the same place have basically the same body parts. Lions and zebras both live on the savanna, so they're built the same."
The Write It! zebra-and-lion question is built to catch this. Both animals live in the same ecosystem, but their structures are completely different because their jobs (hunt vs. flee) are completely different. Lion: sharp claws, powerful jaws, eyes facing forward for binocular vision and tracking prey. Zebra: hooves for running, eyes on the sides of the head for wide peripheral vision to spot predators. The Organize It! card sort drives it home with three ocean organisms (pelican, octopus, brain coral) and three more (kelp, sea otter, brain coral) that share an environment but have completely different structures because they do completely different things in that environment.

What you get with this Organism Structures & Functions activity

📷 Inside-the-product — add screenshot of Read It passage or sample answer sheet

When you buy the Station Lab, you get a single download with everything you need:

Print version at two reading levels (Dependent for on-grade, Modified for additional support) plus a Spanish Read It! passage
Digital version as PowerPoint files (works in Google Slides too) at both levels — for 1:1 classrooms or Google Classroom
Teacher Directions and Answer Key for both versions, all keys included
Station task cards ready to print, laminate, and drop in baskets at each station
Reference cards for the Research It! station (9 cards across three environments: desert, ocean, and forest, plus the analysis questions)
Sort cards for the Organize It! station (organism, structure, and function matching across 6 organisms including pelican, octopus, sea otter, kelp, brain coral, and crocodile)
Student answer sheets for each level

Tips for teaching organism structures and functions in your 5th grade classroom

Two things make this lab go smoother the first time:

1. Check school policy on food before the Explore It! station.

The M&Ms-gummy-worms-goldfish-crackers exploration is the part students will talk about for weeks. It's also the part that needs a quick check with your campus on allergies and food-in-class policy. Some schools have a blanket no-food rule for science class. If yours does, swap the three foods for non-food items that match the same texture profile: a small dice for the M&M, a rubber band for the gummy worm, and a small square of paper for the goldfish cracker. The tool-and-grip lesson still works.

2. Tell kids to commit to ONE tool for all three foods.

The whole point of the Explore It! station is to feel what it's like to have only one structure (one beak shape, one body part). If kids switch tools between food rounds, the lesson collapses. Restate it before they start: "You picked your tool. You keep that tool for all three foods. Pelicans don't switch beaks." The teacher catches every group's reflection at the end and asks the kids who picked a different tool to compare results. That's where the structure-function lightbulb actually goes off.

Get this Organism Structures & Functions activity

Organism Structures & Functions Station Lab for 5th grade life science — TEKS 5.13A

Buy the Station Lab — $7.20

Or if you want the full two-week experience with the Engage hook, Explain day, Elaborate extension, and Evaluate assessment all included:

Buy the full 5E Complete Lesson — $13.20

(Station Lab is included)

Frequently asked questions

What does TEKS 5.13A cover?

Texas TEKS 5.13A asks 5th grade students to investigate and explain how structures and functions of organisms enable them to survive in their environment. Students should be able to identify a structure (like a beak or a leaf), describe its function (what job it does), and explain how that structure-function pairing helps the organism survive where it lives.

What's the difference between structure, function, and behavior?

This is the part 5th graders struggle with most. A structure is a body part (eyes, legs, claws, leaves). A function is the job that structure does (seeing, walking, grabbing, absorbing sunlight). A behavior is an action the organism takes (jumping, hunting, dancing, hiding). A frog's legs are a structure. Movement is the function. Jumping is a behavior. The Read It! passage and the Assess It! multiple choice make this distinction crystal clear.

How long does this Organism Structures & Functions activity take?

One to two class periods (45 to 110 minutes total). The Explore It! station with the three timed food rounds is the longest piece, so plan for two periods the first time you run a station lab. Once your class has the rotation routine down, most groups can finish all 8 stations in one period.

Do I need a lot of supplies for this?

Just snack food and three simple tools. A bag of M&Ms, a bag of gummy worms, a box of goldfish crackers, a handful of toothpicks, clothespins, and straws. Total cost for a class of 30: under $20. The Watch It! station also needs a device with internet. Everything else (plates, timers, paper) you already have.

Can I use this in a 1:1 digital classroom?

Yes. The full digital version (PowerPoint or Google Slides) works in 1:1 classrooms and Google Classroom. Students drag digital cards at the Organize It! station and type their answers. The Explore It! food-and-tool exploration is harder to digitize. If you can't do the physical exploration, substitute a video of birds using different beak shapes on different foods (NSTA, PBS, and BBC all have short clips).