CT Topics

Abstraction > Grades 3-5

In grades 3-5, students begin to use words, letters, numbers, symbols, or pictographs to represent information in another form (similar to using variables in math to represent unknown numbers), including using group names to represent any member of that group (such as "triangle" to represent "any 3-sided figure).

They continue to build their ability to break down large problems into smaller sub-problems, chunking common sets of steps that they can refer to all at once by naming it.

They use graphs to represent larger data sets, and use these visualizations to make conjectures about the phenomenon the data represents (perhaps comparing two different data elements on the same chart).

Grade 3 Science: Populations and Habitat

Students explore population cycles of organisms within a habitat.

• Students physically act out the Oh Deer! game, where they each represent different animals or resources.
• They analyze the rules of the game, and break down the large problem into smaller parts.
• They use graphs to explore patterns in the population data, make conjectures about cause-and-effect, and make predictions about future states of the populations.

Grade 3 Mathematics: Fractions

Students encounter input-output machine imagery to see steps in some interesting algorithms that involve fractions.

• Students see different algorithms that have the same effect on numbers, and seeing that different algorithms have the same effect is a case of generalization.

Grade 3 Science: Build It Fix It

Students learn how force and motion can be transferred through chain reactions.

• Students collect data from a number of experiments of rolling balls down ramps. These involve a number of combinations of different types of balls, ramp heights, and surfaces. They organize and arrange (sort) the data to make conjectures about momentum, friction, and other physical concepts.
• In building chain reactions into a Rube Goldberg machine, they take a problem (knock down a block) and break it into components (combining at least 3 different chain reactions into their final project).

Grade 4 Science: Electrical Circuits

Students explore electrical circuits to demonstrate how energy can be transferred from place to place.

• Students experiment and document a number of attempts to make a light bulb light using a battery and some wire. They develop a simplified scheme to represent these various combinations without drawing detailed pictures of each one, and ultimately represent a connection using only a string of letters.

Grade 5 Mathematics: Number Fluency and Fractions

Students encounter input-output machine imagery to see steps in some interesting algorithms that involve fractions.

• Students see different algorithms that have the same effect on numbers, and seeing that different algorithms have the same effect is a case of generalization.

Grade 5 Science: Plants Make Their Own Food

Students use an online environment to read a story about how plants grow under different conditions. They reflect on their understanding through writing and use models and test variables.

• The model students use relies on icons to represent various components of the model.