We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. -- Carl Sagan

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Overview

Prior to working for High Tech High, I taught at Stevenson PACT Elementary School, where my teaching partner and I taught to the Next Generation Science Standards. We primarily used the FOSS curriculum. In my current position, our grade-level team continues to use those standards and resources to inform our work. With my students, I have developed success criteria for all classroom practices, including math assignments, and it is available here.

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Next Generation Science Standards

Second Grade

Matter and Its Interactions

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 2-PS1-1 Plan and conduct an investigation to describe and classify different kinds of materials by their observable properties.[Clarification Statement: Observations could include color, texture, hardness, and flexibility. Patterns could include the similar properties that different materials share.]
  • 2-PS1-2 Analyze data obtained from testing different materials to determine which materials have the properties that are best suited for an intended purpose.* [Clarification Statement: Examples of properties could include, strength, flexibility, hardness, texture, and absorbency.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment of quantitative measurements is limited to length.]
  • 2-PS1-3 Make observations to construct an evidence-based account of how an object made of a small set of pieces can be disassembled and made into a new object. [Clarification Statement: Examples of pieces could include blocks, building bricks, or other assorted small objects.]
  • 2-PS1-4 Construct an argument with evidence that some changes caused by heating or cooling can be reversed and some cannot. [Clarification Statement: Examples of reversible changes could include materials such as water and butter at different temperatures. Examples of irreversible changes could include cooking an egg, freezing a plant leaf, and heating paper.]

Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 2-LS2-1 Plan and conduct an investigation to determine if plants need sunlight and water to grow. [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to testing one variable at a time.]
    
  • 2-LS2-2 Develop a simple model that mimics the function of an animal in dispersing seeds or pollinating plants.

Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 2-LS4-1 Make observations of plants and animals to compare the diversity of life in different habitats. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on the diversity of living things in each of a variety of different habitats.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include specific animal and plant names in specific habitats.]​

Earth's Place in the Universe

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 2-ESS1-1 Use information from several sources to provide evidence that Earth events can occur quickly or slowly. [Clarification Statement: Examples of events and timescales could include volcanic explosions and earthquakes, which happen quickly and erosion of rocks, which occurs slowly.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include quantitative measurements of timescales.]​

Earth's Systems

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 2-ESS2-1 Compare multiple solutions designed to slow or prevent wind or water from changing the shape of the land.*[Clarification Statement: Examples of solutions could include different designs of dikes and windbreaks to hold back wind and water, and different designs for using shrubs, grass, and trees to hold back the land.]
    
  • 2-ESS2-2 Develop a model to represent the shapes and kinds of land and bodies of water in an area.  [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include quantitative scaling in models.]
    
  • 2-ESS2-3 Obtain information to identify where water is found on Earth and that it can be solid or liquid.

Third Grade

Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 3-PS2-1 Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence of the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object. [Clarification Statement: Examples could include an unbalanced force on one side of a ball can make it start moving; and, balanced forces pushing on a box from both sides will not produce any motion at all.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to one variable at a time: number, size, or direction of forces. Assessment does not include quantitative force size, only qualitative and relative. Assessment is limited to gravity being addressed as a force that pulls objects down.]
  • 3-PS2-2 Make observations and/or measurements of an object’s motion to provide evidence that a pattern can be used to predict future motion. [Clarification Statement: Examples of motion with a predictable pattern could include a child swinging in a swing, a ball rolling back and forth in a bowl, and two children on a see-saw.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include technical terms such as period and frequency.]
  • 3-PS2-3 Ask questions to determine cause and effect relationships of electric or magnetic interactions between two objects not in contact with each other. [Clarification Statement: Examples of an electric force could include the force on hair from an electrically charged balloon and the electrical forces between a charged rod and pieces of paper; examples of a magnetic force could include the force between two permanent magnets, the force between an electromagnet and steel paperclips, and the force exerted by one magnet versus the force exerted by two magnets. Examples of cause and effect relationships could include how the distance between objects affects strength of the force and how the orientation of magnets affects the direction of the magnetic force.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to forces produced by objects that can be manipulated by students, and electrical interactions are limited to static electricity.]
  • 3-PS2-4 Define a simple design problem that can be solved by applying scientific ideas about magnets.* [Clarification Statement: Examples of problems could include constructing a latch to keep a door shut and creating a device to keep two moving objects from touching each other.]​

From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 3-LS1-1 Develop models to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycles but all have in common birth, growth, reproduction, and death. [Clarification Statement: Changes organisms go through during their life form a pattern.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment of plant life cycles is limited to those of flowering plants. Assessment does not include details of human reproduction.]​

Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 3-LS2-1 Construct an argument that some animals form groups that help members survive.

Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 3-LS3-1 Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence that plants and animals have traits inherited from parents and that variation of these traits exists in a group of similar organisms. [Clarification Statement: Patterns are the similarities and differences in traits shared between offspring and their parents, or among siblings. Emphasis is on organisms other than humans.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include genetic mechanisms of inheritance and prediction of traits. Assessment is limited to non-human examples.]
  • 3-LS3-2 Use evidence to support the explanation that traits can be influenced by the environment. [Clarification Statement: Examples of the environment affecting a trait could include normally tall plants grown with insufficient water are stunted; and, a pet dog that is given too much food and little exercise may become overweight.]​

Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 3-LS4-1 Analyze and interpret data from fossils to provide evidence of the organisms and the environments in which they lived long ago. [Clarification Statement: Examples of data could include type, size, and distributions of fossil organisms. Examples of fossils and environments could include marine fossils found on dry land, tropical plant fossils found in Arctic areas, and fossils of extinct organisms.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include identification of specific fossils or present plants and animals. Assessment is limited to major fossil types and relative ages.]
  • 3-LS4-2 Use evidence to construct an explanation for how the variations in characteristics among individuals of the same species may provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing. [Clarification Statement: Examples of cause and effect relationships could be plants that have larger thorns than other plants may be less likely to be eaten by predators; and, animals that have better camouflage coloration than other animals may be more likely to survive and therefore more likely to leave offspring.]
  • 3-LS4-3 Construct an argument with evidence that in a particular habitat some organisms can survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all. [Clarification Statement: Examples of evidence could include needs and characteristics of the organisms and habitats involved. The organisms and their habitat make up a system in which the parts depend on each other.]
  • 3-LS4-4 Make a claim about the merit of a solution to a problem caused when the environment changes and the types of plants and animals that live there may change. [Clarification Statement: Examples of environmental changes could include changes in land characteristics, water distribution, temperature, food, and other organisms.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to a single environmental change. Assessment does not include the greenhouse effect or climate change.]

Earth's Systems

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 3-ESS2-1 Represent data in tables and graphical displays to describe typical weather conditions expected during a particular season. [Clarification Statement: Examples of data could include average temperature, precipitation, and wind direction.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment of graphical displays is limited to pictographs and bar graphs. Assessment does not include climate change.]
  • 3-ESS2-2 Obtain and combine information to describe climates in different regions of the world.​

Earth and Human Activity

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 3-ESS3-1 Make a claim about the merit of a design solution that reduces the impacts of a weather-related hazard. [Clarification Statement: Examples of design solutions to weather-related hazards could include barriers to prevent flooding, wind resistant roofs, and lightning rods.]

Fourth Grade

Energy

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 4-PS3-1 Use evidence to construct an explanation relating the speed of an object to the energy of that object. [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include quantitative measures of changes in the speed of an object or on any precise or quantitative definition of energy.]
  • 4-PS3-2 Make observations to provide evidence that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents. [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include quantitative measurements of energy.]
  • 4-PS3-3 Ask questions and predict outcomes about the changes in energy that occur when objects collide. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on the change in the energy due to the change in speed, not on the forces, as objects interact.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include quantitative measurements of energy.]
  • 4-PS3-4 Apply scientific ideas to design, test, and refine a device that converts energy from one form to another.* [Clarification Statement: Examples of devices could include electric circuits that convert electrical energy into motion energy of a vehicle, light, or sound; and, a passive solar heater that converts light into heat. Examples of constraints could include the materials, cost, or time to design the device.] [Assessment Boundary: Devices should be limited to those that convert motion energy to electric energy or use stored energy to cause motion or produce light or sound.]​

Waves and their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 4-PS4-1 Develop a model of waves to describe patterns in terms of amplitude and wavelength and that waves can cause objects to move. [Clarification Statement: Examples of models could include diagrams, analogies, and physical models using wire to illustrate wavelength and amplitude of waves.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include interference effects, electromagnetic waves, non-periodic waves, or quantitative models of amplitude and wavelength.]
  • 4-PS4-2 Develop a model to describe that light reflecting from objects and entering the eye allows objects to be seen. [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include knowledge of specific colors reflected and seen, the cellular mechanisms of vision, or how the retina works.]
  • 4-PS4-3 Generate and compare multiple solutions that use patterns to transfer information.* [Clarification Statement: Examples of solutions could include drums sending coded information through sound waves, using a grid of 1’s and 0’s representing black and white to send information about a picture, and using Morse code to send text.]​

From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 4-LS1-1 Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction. [Clarification Statement: Examples of structures could include thorns, stems, roots, colored petals, heart, stomach, lung, brain, and skin.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to macroscopic structures within plant and animal systems.]
  • 4-LS1-2 Use a model to describe that animals receive different types of information through their senses, process the information in their brain, and respond to the information in different ways. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on systems of information transfer.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include the mechanisms by which the brain stores and recalls information or the mechanisms of how sensory receptors function.] 

Earth's Place in the Universe

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 4-ESS1-1 Identify evidence from patterns in rock formations and fossils in rock layers to support an explanation for changes in a landscape over time. [Clarification Statement: Examples of evidence from patterns could include rock layers with marine shell fossils above rock layers with plant fossils and no shells, indicating a change from land to water over time; and, a canyon with different rock layers in the walls and a river in the bottom, indicating that over time a river cut through the rock.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include specific knowledge of the mechanism of rock formation or memorization of specific rock formations and layers. Assessment is limited to relative time.]

Earth's Systems

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 4-ESS2-1 Make observations and/or measurements to provide evidence of the effects of weathering or the rate of erosion by water, ice, wind, or vegetation. [Clarification Statement: Examples of variables to test could include angle of slope in the downhill movement of water, amount of vegetation, speed of wind, relative rate of deposition, cycles of freezing and thawing of water, cycles of heating and cooling, and volume of water flow.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to a single form of weathering or erosion.]
    
  • 4-ESS2-2 Analyze and interpret data from maps to describe patterns of Earth’s features. [Clarification Statement: Maps can include topographic maps of Earth’s land and ocean floor, as well as maps of the locations of mountains, continental boundaries, volcanoes, and earthquakes.]​

Earth and Human Activity

• Students who demonstrate understanding can:
  • 4-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information to describe that energy and fuels are derived from natural resources and their uses affect the environment. [Clarification Statement: Examples of renewable energy resources could include wind energy, water behind dams, and sunlight; nonrenewable energy resources are fossil fuels and fissile materials. Examples of environmental effects could include loss of habitat due to dams, loss of habitat due to surface mining, and air pollution from burning of fossil fuels.]
    
  • 4-ESS3-2 Generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impacts of natural Earth processes on humans.* [Clarification Statement: Examples of solutions could include designing an earthquake resistant building and improving monitoring of volcanic activity.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions.]

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Life Cycle Diagram Exemplars

At the conclusion of our life cycles unit, I ask students to work in small groups to write four paragraphs, explaining the stages of development with a corresponding visual, for one of the organisms we studied.

2014-2015

2013-2014

2012-2013

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STEAM Fair

During the 2014-2015 school year, a classroom parent, who is also a teacher with Science is Elementary, facilitated a scientific investigation about the size and shape of seeds in which students created paper copter models and measured the time it took them to fall to the ground from the same height. Students shared their findings at our yearly STEAM Fair.