Students in middle school continue to develop their understanding of the three disciplinary core ideas in the Earth and Space Sciences. The middle school performance expectations in Earth Space Science build on the elementary school ideas and skills and allow middle school students to explain more in-depth phenomena central not only to the earth and space sciences, but to life and physical sciences as well. These performance expectations blend the core ideas with scientific and engineering practices and crosscutting concepts to support students in developing useable knowledge to explain ideas across the science disciplines. While the performance expectations shown in middle school earth and space science couple particular practices with specific disciplinary core ideas, instructional decisions should include use of many practices that lead to the performance expectations.
NGSS Middle School Earth and Space SciencesÂ
ESS1.A: The Universe and Its Stars