Science

• Earth’s Materials: Identify elements, rocks, soil, and living organisms found on the earth’s surface. Understand that air is a mixture of gases that is all around us and that wind is moving air. (Air takes up space.)
• The Weather (part 1): Weather changes from day to day and over the seasons. Understand weather charts, wind, and kinds of precipitation.
• The Sun as a Source of Light and Heat: The sun supplies heat and light to the earth and is necessary for life.
• Periodic Phenomena: Understand the different seasons of the year, day and night, how and for what thermometers are used for, and weather patterns.
• Rocks and Their Properties: Learn what a mineral is and characteristics of ore minerals such as magnetite and hematite (two sources of iron). Learn how silica from sand is used to make glass. Discuss physical properties of minerals (hardness, color, luster, cleavage, and streak) and also heaviness, color, texture, crystal shapes, luster, surface patterns, etc. Discuss Moh’s Scale of Hardness. Learn categories of rocks (including metamorphic, igneous, and sedimentary) and their properties.
• Composition, Formation, and Properties of Soil: The ways in which soil is formed and differences in color, texture, odor, and clumping due to organic components vs. other components. Different properties of soil, including color, texture (size of particles), the ability to retain water, and the ability to support the growth of plants.
• The Weather (part 2): How air temperature, moisture, wind speed and direction, and precipitation make up the weather in a particular place and time. Discuss classical (not digital) weather instruments, including thermometers, barometers, rain gauges, hygrometers, and anemometers, which demonstrate the physical principles that make them work. (Build weather instruments!).
• Earth’s History: How the surface of the earth changes from natural events such as erosion, weathering, landslides, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes.
• The Earth in the Solar System: Earth is part of a system called the “solar system” that includes the sun (a star), planets, and many moons. The earth revolves around (orbits) the sun in a year’s time and rotates on its axis once approximately every 24 hours.
• Earth and Space Science: Air temperature, moisture, wind speed and direction, and precipitation make up the weather in a particular place and time. Understand various forms of precipitation (rain, snow, sleet, and hail) and how it relates to climate.
• Technology/Engineering Learning: Learn about materials commonly used to accomplish design tasks based on a specific property. Identify and explain the appropriate materials and tools to construct a given prototype safely. Identify relevant design features (e.g., size, shape, weight) for building a prototype of a solution to a given problem.
• Characteristics of Living Things: Learn how plants develop from seeds and discuss plant life cycles. Identify and distinguish living organisms and nonliving things. Discuss groups of animals (e.g., insects, birds, fish, mammals) and their life cycles.
• Heredity: Understand why plants and animals closely resemble their parents.
• Evolution and Biodiversity: Fossils provide us with information about living things that inhabited the earth years ago.
• Living Organisms and Their Environments: People and animals interact with the environment through their senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Plants interact with their environment in ways, as well. Understand ways in which an organism’s habitat provides for the organisms basic needs (plants require air, water, nutrients, and light; animals require food, water, air, and shelter).
• Characteristics, Structures and Functions of Plants and Animals: Classify plants and animals according to the physical characteristics that they share. Identify the structures in plants (leaves, roots, flowers, stem, bark, wood) that are responsible for food production, support, water transport, reproduction, growth, and protection. Review life cycles of plants and animals.
• Adaptations of Living Things: Look at physical characteristics of plants or animals that come from widely different environments (e.g., desert vs. tropical plants, aquatic vs. terrestrial animals). Discuss how engineers design things by using their knowledge of the ways that animals move (e.g., birds and wings influence airplane design, tails and fins of aquatic animals influence boat design). Discuss how inherited characteristics may change over time as organisms adapt to changes in the environment to help them survive, e.g., shape of beak or feet, placement of eyes on head, length of neck, shape of teeth, color.
• Energy and Living Things: Discuss how energy derived from the sun is used by plants to produce sugars (photosynthesis) and is transferred within a food chain from producers (plants) to consumers to decomposers.
• States of Matter (part 1): Identify objects and materials as solid, liquid, or gas. Recognize that solids have a definite shape and that liquid and gases take the shape of their container.
• Position and Motion of Objects: How objects can move, such as in a straight line, zigzag, back-and-forth, round- and-round, fast, and slow. The way to change the motion of an object is to apply a force (give it a push or a pull).
• Objects and Materials: Differentiate between properties of objects (e.g., size, shape, weight) and properties of materials (e.g., color, texture, and hardness).
• States of Matter (part 2): Elaborate and go into greater detail on the different states of matter.
• Forms of Energy: Discuss the basic forms of energy (light, sound, heat, electrical, and magnetic). Energy is the ability to cause motion or create change.

• Mapping the Earth: Learn about earth’s common physical features in various mapping representations, including contour maps.
• Earth’s structure: Learn the layers of the earth, including the lithosphere, the hot convecting mantle, and the dense metallic core.
• Heat Transfer in the Earth System: Discuss radiation, conduction, convection, the global patterns of atmospheric movement, and the temperature differences among water, land, and the atmosphere.
• The Earth in the Solar System: The universe contains many billions of galaxies, and each galaxy contains many billions of stars. Also discuss gravity, lunar and solar eclipses, observed moon phases, and ocean tides.
• Organisms and Structure & Function of Cells: Discuss single-celled organisms (e.g., bacteria, yeast), plant and animal cells, and basic functions of organisms (e.g., extracting energy from food and getting rid of waste).
• Systems in Living Things: Learn the general functions of the major systems of the human body (digestion, respiration, reproduction, circulation, excretion, protection from disease, and movement, control, and coordination) and describe ways that these systems interact with each other. Recognize that hereditary information is contained in genes located in the chromosomes of each cell. A human cell contains about 30,000 different genes on 23 different chromosomes.
• Energy and Living Things: Explain how dead plants and animals are broken down by other living organisms. Recognize that producers (plants that contain chlorophyll) use the energy from sunlight to make sugars from carbon dioxide and water through a process called photosynthesis.
• Properties of Matter: Understand weight, mass, volume, density, and how they relate to each other.
• Elements, Compounds, and Mixtures: Learn the definitions and relations between atoms and molecules, elements and compounds, and mixtures and pure substances. Discuss melting point, boiling point, physical change, and chemical change.
• Motion of Objects: Discuss motion of an object, direction of motion, and speed.
• Energy: Define potential energy, kinetic energy, and heat energy. Discuss how heat moves in predictable ways, from warmer objects to cooler ones until they reach equilibrium.
• Technology & Engineering (Materials, Tools, and Machines): Identify appropriate materials (e.g., wood, paper, plastic, aggregates, ceramics, metals, solvents, and adhesives) based on specific properties and characteristics (e.g., strength, hardness, and flexibility). Identify and explain the safe and proper use of measuring tools, hand tools, and machines needed to construct a prototype of an engineering design.
• Engineering Design: Identify and explain the steps of the engineering design process, construct a prototype, test and evaluate, communicate the solution(s), and redesign. Explain how such design features as size, shape, weight, function, and cost limitations would affect the construction of a given prototype. Identify the five elements of a universal systems model: goal, inputs, processes, outputs, and feedback.
• Communication Technology: Discuss components of a communication system, i.e., source, encoder, transmitter, receiver, decoder, storage, retrieval, and destination. Identify and explain the appropriate tools, machines, and electronic devices (e.g., drawing tools, computer-aided design, and cameras) used to produce and/or reproduce design solutions (e.g., engineering drawings, prototypes, and reports). Identify and compare communication technologies and systems, i.e., audio, visual, printed, and mass communication. Identify and explain how symbols and icons (e.g., international symbols and graphics) are used to communicate a message.
• Manufacturing Technologies: Discuss impacts of interchangeable parts, components of mass-produced products, and the use of automation, e.g., robotics. Describe a manufacturing organization, e.g., corporate structure, research and development, production, marketing, quality control, distribution. Explain basic processes in manufacturing systems, e.g., cutting, shaping, assembling, joining, finishing, quality control, and safety.
• Construction Technologies: Describe and explain parts of a structure, e.g., foundation, flooring, decking, wall, roofing systems. Identify and describe three major types of bridges (e.g., arch, beam, and suspension) and their appropriate uses (e.g., site, span, resources, and load). Explain how the forces of tension, compression, torsion, bending, and shear affect the performance of bridges. Describe and explain the effects of loads and structural shapes on bridges.
• Transportation Technology:Identify and compare examples of transportation systems and devices that operate on or in each of the following: land, air, water, and space. Identify and describe three subsystems of a transportation vehicle or device, i.e., structural, propulsion, guidance, suspension, control, and support. Identify and explain lift, drag, friction, thrust, and gravity in a vehicle or device, e.g., cars, boats, airplanes, rockets.
• Bioengineering Technology: Explain examples of adaptive or assistive devices, e.g., prosthetic devices, wheelchairs, eyeglasses, grab bars, hearing aids, lifts, braces. Describe and explain adaptive and assistive bioengineered products, e.g., food, bio-fuels, irradiation, integrated pest management.

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