1: The student knows and applies scientific concepts and principles to understand the properties, structures, and changes in physical, earth/space, and living systems.

1.1: Understand how properties are used to identify, describe, and categorize substances, materials, and objects and how characteristics are used to categorize living things.

1.1.1: Understand how to use physical and chemical properties to sort and identify substances.

1.1.1.a: Identify, categorize, describe, and sort substances using physical and/or chemical properties (i.e., boiling point, density, freezing point, mass, acidity [pH], solubility, magnetism).

Density Experiment: Slice and Dice
Density Laboratory
Mineral Identification
Weight and Mass
pH Analysis

1.1.3: Understand sound waves, water waves, and light waves using wave properties, including amplitude, wavelength, and speed. Understand wave behaviors, including reflection, refraction, transmission, and absorption.

1.1.3.b: Describe the behavior of sound and water waves as the waves are reflected and/or absorbed by a substance.

Longitudinal Waves
Ripple Tank

1.1.4: Understand that energy is a property of matter, objects, and systems and comes in many forms (i.e., heat [thermal] energy, sound energy, light energy, electrical energy, kinetic energy, potential energy, and chemical energy).

1.1.4.a: Describe the forms of energy present in matter, objects, and systems (i.e., heat [thermal] energy, sound energy, light energy, electrical energy, kinetic energy, potential energy, and chemical energy).

Energy Conversion in a System
Energy Conversions
Heat Absorption
Herschel Experiment
Inclined Plane - Sliding Objects
Radiation
Sled Wars

1.2: Understand how components, structures, organizations, and interconnections describe systems.

1.2.2: Understand how various factors affect energy transfers and that energy can be transformed from one form of energy to another.

1.2.2.a: Describe and determine the factors that affect heat energy transfer (e.g., properties of substances/ materials [conductors, insulators], distance, direction, position).

Conduction and Convection
Heat Absorption
Heat Transfer by Conduction
Radiation

1.2.2.b: Describe how an increase in one type of energy of an object or system results in a decrease in other types of energy within that object or system (e.g., a falling object’s potential energy decreases while its kinetic energy increases).

Air Track
Energy Conversion in a System
Energy Conversions
Inclined Plane - Sliding Objects

1.2.2.c: Describe how waves transfer energy (e.g., light waves transfer energy from sun to Earth; air transfers an object’s vibrations from one place to another as sound).

Heat Absorption
Herschel Experiment
Longitudinal Waves
Radiation

1.2.3: Understand that all matter is made of particles called atoms and that atoms may combine to form molecules and that atoms and molecules can form mixtures.

1.2.3.b: Describe that elements are made of one kind of atom.

Element Builder

1.2.5: Understand the structure of the Solar System.

1.2.5.a: Describe how the Earth orbits the Sun and the Moon orbits the Earth.

2D Eclipse
Phases of the Moon
Tides

1.2.5.b: Describe the Sun (i.e., a medium-size star, the largest body in our solar system, major source of energy for phenomena on Earth's surface).

Energy Conversions

1.2.5.c: Describe how planets, asteroids, and comets orbit the Sun.

Gravity Pitch
Solar System

1.2.6: Understand that specialized cells within multicellular organisms form different kinds of tissues, organs, and organ systems to carry out life functions.

1.2.6.a: Describe and identify how plant and animal cells are similar and different in structure and function.

Cell Structure

1.2.6.b: Describe basic cell functions (i.e., extracting energy from food, using energy, and getting rid of waste).

Cell Energy Cycle
Cell Structure
Paramecium Homeostasis

1.2.7: Understand that organisms pass on genetic information in their life cycle and that an organism's characteristics are determined by both genetic and environmental influences.

1.2.7.a: Explain that organisms require a set of instructions for specifying their traits (i.e., heredity is the passage of these instructions from one generation to another).

Mouse Genetics (One Trait)
Mouse Genetics (Two Traits)

1.2.7.b: Describe that genes inherited from parents are combined in their offspring to produce a new combination of characteristics.

Mouse Genetics (One Trait)

1.2.8: Understand human life functions and the interconnecting organ systems necessary to maintain human life.

1.2.8.a: Describe the components and functions of the organ systems (i.e., circulatory, digestive, reproductive, excretory, nervous-sensory [brain, nerves, spinal cord, hearing, vision], respiratory, and muscular-skeletal systems).

Circulatory System
Digestive System

1.3: Understand how interactions within and among systems cause changes in matter and energy.

1.3.7: Understand the effects of the regular and predictable motions of planets and moons in the Solar System.

1.3.7.a: Describe the causes of seasonal changes on Earth and other planets (i.e., Earth’s tilt causes different parts of Earth to point toward the Sun at different times of the year).

Seasons in 3D
Seasons: Earth, Moon, and Sun
Seasons: Why do we have them?
Summer and Winter

1.3.7.b: Describe the effects of the position of the Sun and Moon on Earth phenomena (i.e., Moon phases, solar and lunar eclipses, shadows on Earth, tides).

2D Eclipse
Phases of the Moon
Tides