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January 31, 2024
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February 1, 2024
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Science Indicators

Kindergarten

Earth

  • Explore that animals and plants cause changes to their surroundings
  • Explore that sometimes change is too fast to see and sometimes change is too slow to see

Life

  • Explore differences between living and non-living things (e.g., plant-rock)
  • Investigate the habitats of many different kinds of local plants and animals and some of the ways in which animals depend on plants and each other in our community.

Physical

  • Examine and describe objects according to the materials that make up the object (e.g., wood, metal, plastic, cloth).
  • Describe and sort objects by one or more properties (e.g., size, color, shape).

Science and Technology

  • Explore that objects can be sorted as “natural” or “man-made”.
  • Explore that some materials can be used over and over again (e.g., plastic or glass containers, cardboard boxes and tubes).

Scientific Ways of Knowing

  • Interact with living things and the environment in ways that promote respect.

First Grade

Earth

  • Identify that resources are things that we get from the living (e.g., forests) and nonliving (e.g., minerals, water) environment and that resources are necessary to meet the needs and wants of a population.
  • Explain that the supply of many resources is limited but the supply can be extended through careful use, decreased use, reusing and/or recycling.
  • Explain that all organisms cause changes in the environment where they live; the changes can be very noticeable or slightly noticeable, fast or slow. (e.g., spread of grass cover slowing soil erosion, tree roots slowly breaking sidewalks).

Physical

  • Explore the effects some objects have on others even when the two objects might not touch (e.g., magnets).
  • Recognize that the Sun is an energy source that warms the land, air and water.
  • Describe that energy can be obtained from many sources in many ways (e.g., food, gasoline, electricity or batteries).

Science and Technology

  • Identify some materials that can be saved for community recycling projects (e.g., newspapers, glass and aluminum).
  • Explore ways people use energy to cook their food and warm their homes (e.g., wood, coal, natural gas, electricity).
  • Explain that food comes from sources other than grocery stores (e.g., farm crops, farm animals, oceans, lakes and forests).

Second Grade

Science and Technology

  • Predict how building or trying something new might affect other people and the environment.
  • Communicate orally, pictorially, or written the design process used to make something.

Scientific Ways of Knowing

  • Describe ways in which using the solution to a problem might affect other people and the environment.

Third Grade

Earth

  • Observe and describe the composition of soil (e.g., small pieces of rock and decomposed pieces of plants and animals, and products of plants and animals).
  • Investigate the properties of soil (e.g., color, texture, capacity to retain water, ability to support plant growth)

Fourth Grade

Earth

  • Describe evidence of changes on Earth’s surface in terms of slow processes (e.g., erosion, weathering, mountain building, deposition) and rapid processes (e.g. volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, landslides).

Physical

  • Identify characteristics of a simple physical change (e.g., heating or cooling can change water from one state to another and the change is reversible).
  • Identify characteristics of a simple chemical change. When a new material is marked by combining two or mor materials, it has chemical properties that are different from the original materials (e.g., burning paper, vinegar and baking soda).
  • Describe objects by the properties of the materials from which they are made and that these properties can be used to separate or sort a group of objects (e.g. paper, glass, plastic, metal).

Scientific Inquiry

  • Analyze a series of events and/or simple daily or seasonal cycles, describe the patterns and infer the next likely occurrence.

Fifth Grade

Earth

  • Explain how the supply of many non-renewable resources is limited and can be extended through reducing, reusing and recycling but cannot be extended indefinitely.
  • Investigate ways Earth’s renewable resources (e.g., fresh water, air, wildlife and trees) can be maintained

Life

  • Summarize that organisms can survive only in ecosystems in which their needs can be met (e.g., food, water, shelter, air, carrying capacity and waste disposal). The world has different ecosystems and distinct ecosystems support the lives of different types of organisms.
  • Analyze how all organisms, including humans, cause changes in their ecosystems and how these changes can be beneficial, neutral or detrimental (e.g., beaver ponds, earthworm burrows, grasshoppers eating all plants, people planting and cutting trees, and people introducing a new species).

Science and Technology

  • Investigate positive and negative impacts of human activity and technology on the environment.

Sixth Grade

Earth

  • Explain that rocks are made of one or more minerals.
  • Identify minerals by their characteristic properties.

Physical

  • Describe that in a chemical change new substances are formed with different properties than the original substance (e.g., rusting, burning).
  • Describe that in a physical change (e.g., state, shape, size) the chemical properties of a substance remain unchanged.
  • Explain that the energy found in nonrewable resources such as fossil fuels (e.g., oil, coal, natural gas) originally came from the Sun and may renew slowly over millions of years.
  • Explain that energy derived from renewable resources such as wind and water is assumed to be available indefinitely.
  • Describe how renewable and nonrenewable energy resources can be managed (e.g., fossil fuels, trees, water).

Science and Technology

  • Explain how technology influences the quality of life.
  • Explain how decisions about the use of products and systems can result in desirable or undesirable consequences (e.g., social and environmental).

Seventh Grade

Earth

  • Analyze data on the availability of fresh water that is essential for life and for most industrial and agricultural processes.
  • Describe how rivers, lakes and groundwater can be depleted or polluted becoming less hospitable to life and even becoming unavailable or unsuitable for life.

Physical

  • Investigate how matter can change forms but the total amount of matter remains constant.

Science and Technology

  • Describe how decisions to develop and use technologies often put environmental and economic concerns in direct competition with each other
  • Recognize that science can only answer some questions and technology can only solve some human problems.

Eighth Grade

Science and Technology

  • Examine how science and technology have advanced through the contributions of many different people, cultures and times in history.
  • Examine how choices regarding the use of technology are influenced by constraints caused by various unavoidable factors (e.g., geographic location, limited resources, social, political and economic considerations).
  • Evaluate the overall effectiveness of a product design or solution.

Ninth Grade

Physical

  • Investigate the properties of pure substances and mixtures (e.g., density, conductivity, hardness, and properties of alloys, superconductors and semiconductors).
  • Describe advances and issues in physical science that have important, long-lasting effects on science and society (e.g., atomic theory, quantum theory,
  • Newtonian mechanics, nuclear energy, nanotechnology, plastics and ceramics and communication technology).

Tenth Grade

Earth

  • Explain how the acquisition and use of resources, urban growth and waste disposal can accelerate natural change and impact the quality of life.