Gizmos for Pennsylvania - Science: Grades 6-8 (Science, Technology & Engineering, Environmental Literacy & Sustainability (STEELS) Standards adopted 2022)

This correlation lists the recommended Gizmos for this state's curriculum standards. Click any Gizmo title below for more information.

3.1.6-8: : Life Science

1.1: : Structure and Function

1.1.1: : Structure, Function, and Information Processing

3.1.6-8.A: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Conduct an investigation to provide evidence that living things are made of cells, either one cell or many different numbers and types of cells.

3.1.6-8.B: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop and use a model to describe the function of a cell as a whole and the ways that parts of cells contribute to the function.

3.1.6-8.C: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Use arguments supported by evidence for how the body is a system of interacting subsystems composed of groups of cells.

1.2: : Growth and Development of Organisms

1.2.1: : Growth, Development, and Reproduction of Organisms

3.1.6-8.D: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Use arguments based on empirical evidence and scientific reasoning to support an explanation for how characteristic animal behaviors and specialized plant structures affect the probability of successful reproduction of animals and plants, respectively.

3.1.6-8.E: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how environmental and genetic factors influence the growth of organisms.

1.3: : Organization for Matter and Energy Flow in Organisms

1.3.1: : Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems

3.1.6-8.F: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for the role of photosynthesis in the cycling of matter and flow of energy into and out of organisms.

3.1.6-8.G: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop a model to describe how food is rearranged through chemical reactions forming new molecules that support growth and/or release energy as this matter moves through an organism.

1.4: : Information Processing

1.4.1: : Structure, Function, and Information Processing

3.1.6-8.H: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Gather and synthesize information about how sensory receptors respond to stimuli by sending messages to the brain for immediate behavior or storage as memories.

1.5: : Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems

1.5.1: : Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems

3.1.6-8.I: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.

3.1.6-8.J: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems.

1.6: : Cycles of Matter and Energy Transfer in Ecosystems

1.6.1: : Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems

3.1.6-8.K: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem.

1.7: : Ecosystem Dynamics, Functioning, and Resilience

1.7.1: : Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems

3.1.6-8.L: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Construct an argument supported by empirical evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations.

1.8: : Inheritance of Traits

1.8.1: : Growth, Development, and Reproduction of Organisms

3.1.6-8.M: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop and use a model to describe why structural changes to genes (mutations) located on chromosomes may affect proteins and may result in harmful, beneficial, or neutral effects to the structure and function of the organism.

1.9: : Variation of Traits

1.9.1: : Growth, Development, and Reproduction of Organisms

3.1.6-8.N: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop and use a model to describe why asexual reproduction results in offspring with identical genetic information and sexual reproduction results in offspring with genetic variation.

1.10.1: : Natural Selection and Adaptations

3.1.6-8.O: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Analyze and interpret data for patterns in the fossil record that document the existence, diversity, extinction, and change of life forms throughout the history of life on Earth under the assumption that natural laws operate today as in the past.

3.1.6-8.P: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Apply scientific ideas to construct an explanation for anatomical similarities and differences among modern organisms and between modern and fossil organisms to infer evolutionary relationships.

3.1.6-8.Q: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Analyze displays of pictorial data to compare patterns of similarities in anatomical structures across multiple species to identify relationships not evident in the fully formed anatomy.

1.11: : Natural Selection

1.11.1: : Growth, Development, and Reproduction of Organisms

3.1.6-8.R: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Gather and synthesize information about the technologies that have changed the way humans influence the inheritance of desired traits in organisms.

1.11.2: : Natural Selection and Evolution

3.1.6-8.S: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Construct an explanation based on evidence that describes how genetic variations of traits in a population increase some individuals’ probability of surviving and reproducing in a specific environment.

1.12: : Adaptation

1.12.1: : Natural Selection and Evolution

3.1.6-8.T: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Use mathematical representations to support explanations of how natural selection may lead to increases and decreases of specific traits in populations over time.

1.13: : Biodiversity and Humans

1.13.1: : Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems

3.1.6-8.U: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services.

3.2.6-8: : Physical Science

2.1: : Structure and Properties of Matter

3.2.6-8.A: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop models to describe the atomic composition of simple molecules and extended structures.

3.2.6-8.B: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop a model that predicts and describes changes in the particle motion, temperature, and state of a pure substance when thermal energy is added or removed.

2.2: : Chemical Reactions

3.2.6-8.D: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances before and after the substances interact to determine if a chemical reaction has occurred.

3.2.6-8.E: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop and use a model to describe how the total number of atoms does not change in a chemical reaction and thus mass is conserved.

3.2.6-8.F: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Undertake a design project to construct, test, and modify a device that either releases or absorbs thermal energy by chemical processes.

2.3: : Forces and Motion

2.3.1: : Forces and Interactions

3.2.6-8.G: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Apply Newton’s Third Law to design a solution to a problem involving the motion of two colliding objects.

3.2.6-8.H: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Plan an investigation to provide evidence that the change in an object’s motion depends on the sum of the forces on the object and the mass of the object.

2.4: : Types of Interactions

2.4.1: : Forces and Interactions

3.2.6-8.I: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Ask questions about data to determine the factors that affect the strength of electric and magnetic forces.

3.2.6-8.J: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Construct and present arguments using evidence to support the claim that gravitational interactions are attractive and depend on the masses of interacting objects.

3.2.6-8.K: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Conduct an investigation and evaluate the experimental design to provide evidence that fields exist between objects exerting forces on each other even though the objects are not in contact.

2.5: : Definitions of Energy

2.5.1: : Energy

3.2.6-8.L: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Construct and interpret graphical displays of data to describe the relationships of kinetic energy to the mass and speed of an object.

2.6: : Conservation of Energy and Energy Transfer

2.6.1: : Energy

3.2.6-8.M: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Apply scientific principles to design, construct, and test a device that either minimizes or maximizes thermal energy transfer.

3.2.6-8.N: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Plan an investigation to determine the relationships among the energy transferred, the type of matter, the mass, and the change in the average kinetic energy of the particles as measured by the temperature of the sample.

2.7: : Relationship Between Energy and Forces

2.7.1: : Energy

3.2.6-8.P: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop a model to describe that when the arrangement of objects interacting at a distance changes, different amounts of potential energy are stored in the system.

2.8: : Wave Properties

2.8.1: : Waves and Electromagnetic Radiation

3.2.6-8.Q: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Use mathematical representations to describe a simple model for waves that includes how the amplitude of a wave is related to the energy in a wave.

2.9: : Electromagnetic Radiation

2.9.1: : Waves and Electromagnetic Radiation

3.2.6-8.R: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop and use a model to describe how waves are reflected, absorbed, or transmitted through various materials.

3.3.6-8: : Earth and Space Science

3.1: : The Universe and Its Stars

3.1.1: : Space Systems

3.3.6-8.A: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop and use a model of the Earth-sun-moon system to describe the cyclic patterns of lunar phases, eclipses of the sun and moon, and seasons.

3.3.6-8.B: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop and use a model to describe the role of gravity in the motion within galaxies and the solar system.

3.2: : Earth and the Solar System

3.2.1: : Space Systems

3.3.6-8.C: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Analyze and interpret data to determine scale properties of objects in the solar system.

3.4: : Earth Materials and Systems

3.4.1: : History of Earth

3.3.6-8.E: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Construct an explanation based on evidence for how geoscience processes have changed Earth's surface at varying time and spatial scales.

3.4.2: : Earth’s Systems

3.3.6-8.F: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop a model to describe the cycling of Earth's materials and the flow of energy that drives this process.

3.5: : Plate Tectonics and Large-Scale Interactions

3.5.1: : History of Earth

3.3.6-8.G: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Analyze and interpret data on the distribution of fossils and rocks, continental shapes, and seafloor structures to provide evidence of past plate motions.

3.6: : The Roles of Water in Earth’s Surface Processes

3.6.1: : Earth’s Systems

3.3.6-8.H: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop a model to describe the cycling of water through Earth's systems driven by energy from the sun and the force of gravity.

3.6.2: : Weather and Climate

3.3.6-8.I: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop and use a model to describe how unequal heating and rotation of the Earth cause patterns of atmospheric and oceanic circulation that determine regional climates.

3.7: : Weather and Climate

3.3.6-8.J: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Collect data to provide evidence for how the motion and complex interactions of air masses result in changes in weather conditions.

3.3.6-8.O: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.

3.9: : Natural Hazards

3.3.6-8.L: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Analyze and interpret data on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and inform the development of technologies to mitigate their effects.

3.10.1: : Human Impacts

3.3.6-8.M: : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing human impact on the environment.

3.5.6-8: : Technology & Engineering

5.1: : Applying, Maintaining, and Assessing Technological Products and Systems; Impacts of Technology; Influence of Society on Technological Development

5.1.1: : Applying, Maintaining, Assessing, and Evaluating Technological Products and Systems

3.5.6-8.M (ETS): : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Develop a model to generate data for iterative testing and modification of a proposed object, tool, or process such that an optimal design can be achieved.

3.5.6-8.N (ETS): : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Analyze data from tests to determine similarities and differences among several design solutions to identify the best characteristics of each that can be combined into a new solution to better meet the criteria for success.

3.5.6-8.P (ETS): : Students who demonstrate understanding can: Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.

Correlation last revised: 7/26/2023

Pennsylvania - Science: Grades 6-8

Science, Technology & Engineering, Environmental Literacy & Sustainability (STEELS) Standards | Adopted: 2022

3.1.6-8: : Life Science

3.2.6-8: : Physical Science

3.3.6-8: : Earth and Space Science

3.5.6-8: : Technology & Engineering