Science

Unit 1: Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems (Oct)

How do organisms interact with the living and nonliving environments to obtain matter and energy?

Students will understand that animals depend on their surroundings to get what they need, including food, water, shelter, and a favorable temperature. Animals depend on plants or other animals for food. They use their senses to find food and water, and they use their body parts to gather, catch, eat, and chew the food. Plants depend on air, water, minerals (in the soil), and light to grow. Animals can move around, but plants cannot, and they often depend on animals for pollination or to move their seeds around. Different plants survive better in different settings because they have varied needs for water, minerals, and sunlight.

What is the process for developing potential design solutions?

Students will understand that designs can be conveyed through sketches, drawings, or physical models. These representations are useful in communicating ideas for a problem’s solutions to other people. To design something complicated, one may need to break the problem into parts and attend to each part separately but must then bring the parts together to test the overall plan.

What is biodiversity, how do humans affect it, and how does it affect humans?

Students will understand that there are many different kinds of living things in any area, and they exist in different places on land and in water.

Unit 2: Earth's Systems: Processes that Shape the Earth (Dec-Feb)

How do people reconstruct and date events in Earth’s planetary history?

Students will understand that some events on Earth occur in cycles, like day and night, and others have a beginning and an end, like a volcanic eruption. Some events, like an earthquake, happen very quickly; others, such as the formation of the Grand Canyon, occur very slowly, over a time period much longer than one can observe.

​How do Earth’s major systems interact?

Students will understand that wind and water can change the shape of the land. The resulting landforms, together with the materials on the land, provide homes for living things.

How can the various proposed design solutions be compared and improved?

Students will understand that because there is always more than one possible solution to a problem, it is useful to compare designs, test them, and discuss their strengths and weaknesses.

Why do the continents move, and what causes earthquakes and volcanoes?

Students will understand that rocks, soils, and sand are present in most areas where plants and animals live. There may also be rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds. Maps show where things are located. One can map the shapes and kinds of land and water in any area.

How do the properties and movements of water shape Earth’s surface and affect its systems?

Students will understand that water is found in the ocean, rivers, lakes, and ponds. Water exists as solid ice and in liquid form. It carries soil and rocks from one place to another and determines the variety of life forms that can live in a particular location.

Unit 3: Structures and Properties of Matter (Mar-Apr)

How do particles combine to form the variety of matter one observes?

Students will understand that different kinds of matter exist (e.g., wood, metal, water), and many of them can be either solid or liquid, depending on temperature. Matter can be described and classified by its observable properties (e.g., visual, aural, textural), by its uses, and by whether it occurs naturally or is manufactured. Different properties are suited to different purposes. A great variety of objects can be built up from a small set of pieces (e.g., blocks, construction sets). Objects or samples of a substance can be weighed, and their size can be described and measured. (Boundary: volume is introduced only for liquid measure.)

How do substances combine or change (react) to make new substances? How does one characterize and explain these reactions and make predictions about them?

Students will understand that heating or cooling a substance may cause changes that can be observed. Sometimes these changes are reversible (e.g., melting and freezing), and sometimes they are not (e.g., baking a cake, burning fuel).