Physical Sciences
1. Electricity and magnetism are related effects that have many useful
applications in everyday life.
As a basis for understanding this
concept, students know:
a. how to design and build simple series and parallel
circuits using components such as wires, batteries, and
bulbs.
b. how to build a simple compass and use it to detect
magnetic effects, including Earth's magnetic field.
c. electric currents produce magnetic fields and how to
build a simple electromagnet.
d. the role of electromagnets in the construction of
electric motors, electric generators, and simple devices
such as doorbells and earphones.
e. electrically charged objects attract or repel each
other.
f. magnets have two poles, labeled north and south,
and like poles repel each other while unlike poles
attract each other.
g. electrical energy can be converted to
heat, light and motion.
Life Sciences
2. All organisms need energy and matter to live and grow.
As a basis
for understanding this concept, students know:
a. plants are the primary source of matter and energy
entering most food chains.
b. producers and consumers (herbivores, carnivores,
omnivores, and decomposers) are related in food
chains and food webs, and may compete with each
other for resources in an ecosystem.
c. decomposers, including many fungi, insects, and
microorganisms, recycle matter from dead plants and
animals.
3. Living organisms depend on one another and on their environment
for survival.
As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:
a. ecosystems can be characterized in terms of their
living and nonliving components.
b. for any particular environment, some kinds of plants
and animals survive well, some survive less well, and
some cannot survive at all.
c. many plants depend on animals for pollination and
seed dispersal, while animals depend on plants for
food and shelter.
d. most microorganisms do not cause
disease and many are beneficial.
Earth Sciences
4. The properties of rocks and minerals reflect the processes that
formed them.
As a basis for understanding this concept, students
know:
a. how to differentiate among igneous, sedimentary,
and metamorphic rocks by their properties and
methods of formation (the rock cycle).
b. how to identify common rock-forming minerals
(including quartz, calcite, feldspar, mica, and
hornblende) and ore minerals using a table of
diagnostic properties.
5. Waves, wind, water, and ice shape and reshape the Earth's land
surface.
As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:
a. some changes in the Earth are due to slow
processes, such as erosion, and some changes are
due to rapid processes, such as landslides, volcanic
eruptions, and earthquakes.
b. natural processes, including freezing/thawing and
growth of roots, cause rocks to break down into smaller
pieces.
c. moving water erodes landforms, reshaping the land
by taking it away from some places and depositing it as
pebbles, sand, silt, and mud in other places
(weathering, transport, and deposition).
Investigation and Experimentation
6. Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and
conducting careful investigations.
As a basis for understanding this
concept, and to address the content the other three strands, students
should develop their own questions and perform investigations.
Students will:
a. differentiate observation from inference
(interpretation), and know that scientistsŐ explanations
come partly from what they observe and partly from
how they interpret their observations.
b. measure and estimate weight, length, or volume of
objects.
c. formulate predictions and justify predictions based
on cause and effect relationships.
d. conduct multiple trials to test a prediction and draw
conclusions about the relationships between results
and predictions.
e. construct and interpret graphs from
measurements.
f. follow a set of written instructions for a
scientific investigation.