4th Grade Science Standards

Organism Structures and Behavior

• Plants and animals have internal and external structures that help them grow, protect themselves, behave a certain way, and reproduce.

• Animals have sense receptors that include vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.

• Sense receptors send information to an animal’s brain, which, combined with perceptions and memories, guides their actions.

Changes over Time to Earth’s Surface and Resources

• The locations of mountain ranges, deep-ocean trenches, ocean-floor structures, earthquakes, and volcanos usually occur near the borders of Earth’s tectonic plates.

• Patterns of rock formations and fossils can tell us what changes to Earth’s surface have occurred over time.

• Earth’s surface also changes slowly over time due to forces from wind, water, and ice.

• Renewable and nonrenewable resources exist in and on Earth’s surface, and their use affects the environment.

• Natural hazards such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis also cause changes to Earth’s surface, but humans can take steps to reduce their impacts.

Using Energy Transformations

• Energy is present whenever there are moving objects, sound, light, or heat.

• Energy can be transferred from one object to another and into different forms.

• Energy can be transferred from place to place by moving objects or through sound, light, or electric currents.

• The faster an object is moving, the more energy it has.

• Energy can be stored until it needs to be transferred into another form.

Communicating Using Wave Energy

• Waves are regular patterns of motion.

• Waves differ in amplitude (height) and wavelength (distance between waves).

• We see objects because light is reflected off the objects and enters our eyes.

• Digitized information can travel over long distances by being converted from voice or text to digitized form and back to voice or text.