In this unit, students learn that the primary source of light on Earth is the Sun. The Sun is the star at the center of our solar system. Students will learn that stars, including the Sun, generate their own light, while objects such as the moon reflect that light.  Throughout the module, students will document patterns as they observe the Sun, moon, and stars. The ability to recognize patterns is an important scientific skill that researchers use to develop explanations of observations in nature. Students explore what the sky looks like during the daytime and the nighttime. They examine Earth as a round, ball-shaped planet and develop an understanding of the orientation of Earth and the sun in space, allowing them to figure out that daytime and nighttime are the result of Earth facing or not facing the sun. Students explore the position of the sun in the sky throughout the day and notice the arc-like pattern that the sun makes in the sky during the daytime. They explore what they see in the sky at sunset, closely examining the change from daytime to nighttime. They gather data that shows that these patterns repeat from one day to the next in an ongoing cycle. Students develop an understanding that Earth is always spinning to explain these patterns.  Next, students investigate why the lengths of daytime and nighttime change throughout the year, drawing conclusions about seasonal differences of daytime and nighttime.

In this unit, students will be introduced to a story where a character, Angelina, falls off the monkey bars and breaks her arm. Students follow Angelina’s case as they progress through the module, learning about both the diagnosis and treatment of her injury. As students follow Angelina’s story, they explore the basic relationship between structure and function in the human body. They will look at major structures, or organs, within the body and investigate how the structure of each organ is related to its function. Once students establish an understanding of basic structure and function in the body, they will then take a deeper look at the functions of bone. They will assemble a skeleton and create a model X-ray of a hand. They will then act as scientists to perform an inquiry investigation to understand why each of our fingers are made up of more than one bone. Finally, students will work through an engineering design process to design and build a cast for Angelina.

In this unit, students will develop the ability to design simple programs (sequences of instructions) and implement them with a simple kid-friendly robot called a Beebot. Students’ goal is to use a Beebot robot to model how bees and flowering plants depend upon one another to meet their needs. Students will explore the sequential nature of computer programs by programming the Beebot to move across number lines and rectangular arrays in specific ways to solve “challenges.”  At the same time, they will learn about how bees and flowers depend upon one another to meet their needs. They will begin on Day 1 by learning about the relationship between bees and flowers, and exploring the functions of the Beebot.  They will then solve challenges with simple forward and backward commands on a number line, and use subtraction and addition to help them do so, in the context of moving the bee to a flower and back to its hive.  After several days, they will move on to solving more complex challenges on rectangular arrays, using the turn commands in addition to the forward and backward commands.  They will be introduced to the concepts of “debugging” by being given erroneous command sequences to correct.

Students take on the role of scientists advising an aquarium director by helping answer young visitors’ questions about Spruce the Sea Turtle, who will soon be released back into the ocean. They investigate how Spruce can survive in the ocean, particularly since sharks live in the area. They then investigate a question about Spruce’s offspring: How can Spruce the Sea Turtle’s offspring survive where there are sharks? This context, which serves as the anchor phenomenon for the unit, provides concrete examples and motivation for students to discover the core ideas of the unit about how organisms and their offspring survive, particularly how they avoid being eaten. Students gather evidence through careful observations of photographs and videos of real organisms and by reading science texts. Students create multiple models throughout the unit to explain their ideas about how defenses function. They apply their knowledge to two other challenges along the way—first by making a model that shows a way to defend the aquarium’s animal food supply from being eaten by wildlife, and then by making a model of a sea creature’s defense against being eaten. By the end of the unit, students will be able to use ideas of structure and function to explain how a wide variety of animals and plants and their offspring defend themselves from being eaten.