Science
Students and parents can log into the FOSS units by going to FOSSweb and logging in with our classroom account (per room).
username: sinroom12or sinroom17
password: sinroom12 or sinroom17
What are we learning?
Trimester 3
Energy
The Energy Module provides first hand experiences in physical science dealing with the anchor phenomenon of energy. The investigations focus on the concepts that energy is present whenever there is motion, sound, light, or heat, and that energy can transfer from one place to other. The driving question for the module is how does energy transfer between systems?
Students will investigate electricity effects and engage in engineering design while learning useful applications of electricity in everyday life. They will investigate how the amount of energy transfer changes when balls of different masses hit a stationary object. Students will explore energy transfer through waves (repeating patterns of motion) that results in sound and motion. They will gather information about how energy and fuels are derived from natural resources and how that affects the environment. They will explore alternative sources of energy that use renewable resources. Students will interpret data from graphs to build explanations from evidence and make predictions of future events. They will develop models to represent how energy moves from place to place in electric circuits and in waves.
Students will gain experiences that will contribute to the understanding of crosscutting concepts of patterns; cause and effect; systems and system models; and energy and matter.
Trimester 2
Soils, Rocks, and Landforms
Geology is the study of our planet’s earth materials and natural resources. Because they are so ubiquitous and abundant, they are often taken for granted.
The Soils, Rocks, and Landforms Module has four investigations. Students will observe soils and explore how the weathering of rocks provides the basic ingredients that form soil. Through stream-table investigations students will investigate how erosion and deposition move earth materials and shape new landforms. They will study how changes in Earth can be due to slow processes, such as erosion, as well as rapid processes, such as landslides, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes. And they will explore the formation of fossils and what they tell us about the formation of landforms. Later, students will learn how topographic maps are made and how they help people understand the shape of the land they represent. Finally, students will study earth materials as important natural resources.
Students will gain experiences that will contribute to the understanding of crosscutting concepts of patterns; cause and effect; scale, proportion, and quantity; systems and system models; structure and function; and stability and change.
Trimester 1
Environments
Our Environments Module has three investigations that focus on the concepts that organisms (mealworms/beetles, fish, and snails) have structures and behaviors, including sensory receptors, that serve functions in growth, survival and reproduction, and living organisms depend on one another and on their environment for their survival and the survival of populations.
Students will design investigations to study preferred environments, range of tolerance, and optimum conditions for growth and survival of specific organisms. They will conduct controlled experiments by incrementally changing specific environmental conditions to determine the range of tolerance for early growth of seeds, and use these data to develop and use models to understand the impact of changes to the environment.
They will graph and interpret data from multiple trials of experiments and build explanations from evidence.
Students will gain experiences that will contribute to the understanding of crosscutting concepts of patterns; cause and effect; scale, proportion, and quantity; systems and system models; energy and matter; structure and function; and stability and change.