As a parent, you are an integral part of your child's education. You can review the information below to gain a deeper understanding of math and science at the elementary level. 

You will find resources including: an overview of Illustrative Mathematics, articles on developiong a math mindset, and science content across grades 3-5.

Illustrative Mathematics Across K-5

Developing a Math Mindset 

Below you will find links to articles and other resources to help you understand how your child's mathematical mind develops, how math concepts grow across grade levels, how you can support your child's growth in math, and the foundational standards in our math curriculum.

Your Child's Mathematical Mind

Math Progressions Videos - Understanding how the standards grow

Fostering Success

Connecticut Core Standards (a.k.a. Common Core State Standards)

Summary of the Standards in Spanish and English

Science Topics by grade level

Grade 3:

• Unit 1 - Playground Forces

  • In this unit, students think about the forces that can act on a swing set. Students begin by considering mechanical forces and how balanced and unbalanced forces change the motion of objects. They then explore electrical charges and how like and unlike charges exert forces on each other. Finally, students focus on magnetic forces and magnetic fields. While considering electric and magnetic forces, students examine forces that do not require objects to be in contact and that vary in magnitude as a function of the distance between objects. To summarize their learning, students design a better swing set that takes advantage of the different forces that they have studied.  

• Unit 2 - Life Cycles for Survival

  • In this unit, students explore the many ways in which organisms grow and change throughout their life cycles and how organisms depend on each other for survival. Students begin by examining how plants and animals change and grow throughout their life cycle. They observe patterns in the life cycles of seemingly different organisms such as trees, lion cubs, and mayflies. Next, students look for patterns in how traits are passed on from parents to their offspring and think about how those traits help organisms survive. Students use observations and data to make predictions about parents and their offspring and construct arguments for why some traits are important for an organism’s survival. Finally, students examine how organisms can cooperate and help each other survive. They use evidence to construct an argument for why some animals, such as humpback whales, live together in groups. Students apply the core ideas of the unit by analyzing the life cycle of leafcutter ants and identifying the traits that help the ants work together to survive in the rain forest.

• Unit 3 - Surviving in Changing Environments

  • In this unit, students examine how organisms are able to survive in changing environments. To start the unit, students observe tracks created by a modern organism, a snake, and compare the tracks to those of a dinosaur. Students dive deeper into the unit topics, by examining an image of a fossil fi sh and look for evidence that can help explain what the environment was like long ago. Students are then introduced to a kangaroo rat and asked to identify the traits of the rat that help it to survive in its habitat. They analyze data and investigate how organisms are adapted to particular habitats and make observations and predictions about how the traits of an animal help it to survive. Next, students examine the salt harvest mouse and use evidence to construct an argument for how environmental changes affect its ability to survive in its marshland habitat. Students summarize their learning for this unit by researching their local geological history and communicating evidence of the type of organisms that survived in the area during three different time periods.  

Grade 4:

• Unit 1 - Car Crashes

  • In this unit, students learn about forces, energy, and collisions by studying the physics of car crashes. They
    begin by examining a jet taking off and landing and make observations and predictions about how forces cause objects, like jets and cars, to start or stop moving. Next, students investigate roller coasters to learn about energy and how it can change forms. By making observations and analyzing data, they learn about different types of energy and examine the cause-and-effect relationships between forces that are applied to objects and changes in energy. Then, students relate changes in motion to the motion of cheetahs. They determine which traits enable the cheetah
    to run so much faster than a human. They learn about how speed is measured and make connections between an object’s speed and the forces it experiences. Finally, students examine what happens when two objects moving with a lot of speed, such as a bat and a ball, or two cars, collide with each other. They make predictions about the energy transformations that occur during a collision and connect energy transformations to the forces that are exerted on the colliding objects. Students apply the core ideas of this concept by identifying the properties of a race car that help it achieve a high speed and predicting how its energy will change if it collides with a wall.  

• Unit 2 - Energy Resources

  • In this unit, students are presented with the movement of water flowing down a waterfall and are asked to consider
    the energy involved in this movement. To begin their study of this phenomenon, students consider how energy is used to power remote-controlled cars and other devices. They observe that energy can be transferred from place to place in the form of sound, light, heat, and electricity. Building on this, students obtain information to describe that energy, used to move cars, can be derived from fuels extracted from natural resources. In some cases, fuels are burned to extract their energy, while in other cases, renewable energy resources can be harnessed, as in the case of wind turbines. Students use what they have learned about nonrenewable and renewable energy resources to evaluate the impact that energy use has on the environment, including pollution from burning fossil fuels. Finally, to summarize their learning, students return to harnessing the power of water and consider the damming of the Colorado River with the Hoover Dam. They research the benefits and drawbacks of the dam and propose solutions to address the environmental harm human use of energy causes.

• Unit 3 - Earth's Changing Surface

  • In this unit, students examine the mechanisms that cause changes in the Earth’s surface over time. Students are first presented with an image of a sandcastle being washed away. They use this as a model for how rocks can be broken down by weathering. Then, students examine the cause and effect relationships between processes such as erosion and deposition and the formation of landforms such as canyons, valleys, and deltas. Students examine how maps and images can be used to model the relationships between landforms and even show structures under the ocean. Finally, students take a deep dive into exploring the distribution of volcanoes on Earth, the nature of volcanic eruptions, and the impacts of eruptions on humans. Students summarize their learning for this unit by examining maps of Iceland and making predictions about the forces that have shaped its geography over time. 

Grade 5:

• Unit 1 - What is Matter Made Of?

  • In this unit, students investigate the nature of matter. They are introduced to the mystery of water in an uncovered fish bowl decreasing over time. They work to explain this anchor phenomenon by thinking about another real-world example of holding a hot cup of chocolate and begin to describe the properties of matter using words and measurements. Then, students continue investigating changes to matter when adding or removing thermal energy to water by describing physical changes in matter as a result of heating, cooling, and mixing. Based on their observations, they analyze types of models and develop their own model of matter based on the core idea that matter consists of particles too small to be seen. Finally, using their models, students conduct an investigation to study the loss of water volume from a fish bowl over time.

• Unit 2 - From Matter to Organisms

  • In this unit, students use what they know about the needs of living things to build a model of an ecosystem. To develop this model, students begin by investigating the plant producers at the bottom of the food chain. They accumulate evidence to support an argument that plants get materials they need for growth from air and water. Then, they explore food chains and food webs to build model that describes the movement of these materials among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment. Students realize that, to use these materials, animals extract energy from food, and this energy is the same energy that plants obtain from the sun. Finally, students design and construct a model ecosystem that represents this flow of matter and energy. 

• Unit 3 - Interacting Earth Systems

  • In this unit, students are presented with the problem of Earth’s shrinking freshwater supply. In particular, students address the issue of recycling wastewater by distinguishing the recycling of greywater versus blackwater. To design a solution to this problem, students begin their research by developing models of how the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere interact. Next, they focus on the hydrosphere to describe the distribution of water on Earth in various reservoirs. Because the amount of water stored in surface freshwater reservoirs is so limited, students next obtain and combine information about how communities can use science to protect freshwater resources. Finally, students apply their strategies to a watershed in Michigan. Using data collected from the ecosystem, students design solutions for reducing pollution in this freshwater ecosystem.