Grade Level Expectations
2.3.1: Explain why the total amount of a material remains the same even when exposed to a variety of physical treatments (e.g., flattening or balling up clay, breaking apart a candy bar, pouring liquid into a tall, slender glass vs. a short, fat glass).
3.1.1: Identify sunlight as the source of energy needed for plants to make their own food. Observe that sunlight can also warm objects such as the surface of the Earth.
Cell Energy Cycle
Energy Conversions
3.1.2: Identify that sunlight has three major components; visible, infrared, and ultraviolet, and that the infrared and ultraviolet components cannot be detected by human eyes.
3.1.3: Design and implement an investigation to show that white light coming from the sun consists of a variety of component waves that appear to have different colors to our eyes. Record observations of the investigation and use evidence to communicate results.
3.1.9: Identify that the energy of a moving object depends upon its speed. Give examples of how an object's energy of motion increases when the object's speed increases.
3.2.1: Use rulers, meter sticks, tapes, and watches to measure the distance objects travel in a given period of time, and how much time it takes for an object to travel a certain distance. Organize the measurements in tables, and construct graphs based on the measurements. Reach qualitative conclusions about the speeds of the objects (faster versus slower).
Free Fall Tower
Graphing Skills
3.2.2: Demonstrate and explain how forces of different sizes and directions can produce different kinds of changes in the motion of an object.
3.2.3: Explain how the flow of heat energy contributes to the melting and freezing processes. Describe which way heat energy must flow for liquid water to boil.
3.3.1: Observe that light travels in a straight line away from its source until it strikes an object. Observe that when light strikes an object, it can reflect off the object, transmit through the object, be absorbed within the object, or a combination of these phenomena. Give examples of light being reflected, transmitted, and/or absorbed by objects.
Basic Prism
Color Absorption
Heat Absorption
3.3.2: Using the physical properties of objects, make predictions about how light will behave when it strikes the object. Categorize materials as transparent, translucent, absorbent or reflective based on how they interact with light.
Basic Prism
Color Absorption
Heat Absorption
6.2.1: Explain that all organisms require a form of energy to survive and that humans and other animals obtain energy and materials from food.
Energy Conversions
Forest Ecosystem
6.3.1: Identify external structures (i.e., legs) and behaviors (i.e., walking) of organisms that enable them to survive in their particular ecosystem and describe how these structures enable the organisms to respond to internal (i.e., hunger) and external (i.e., temperature, danger) cues.
8.1.1: Examine a variety of ecosystems such as marsh, pond, field, forest. Compare how the organisms, the habitat, and the food chains are similar and different in these ecosystems.
8.1.2: Differentiate between an organism's "habitat" (where an animal lives) and its "territory" (an area claimed as its own space). Select an organism and describe its habitat and territory.
8.1.4: Identify environmental factors that affect the growth and reproduction of organisms in an ecosystem (e.g., temperature can affect germination and soil moisture).
8.2.1: Conduct investigations to simulate terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and their interdependence. Demonstrate and describe how alteration of one part of the ecosystem (i.e., change in pH, over fertilization, addition of salt) may cause changes throughout the entire ecosystem.
8.2.2: Categorize the organisms within an ecosystem according to the function they serve as producers, consumers, or decomposers. Explain why the organism was categorized this way.
8.2.3: Identify the Sun as a source of energy that drives an ecosystem. Describe the path of energy from the Sun to the producers then to the consumer in the food chain. Recognize that an organism has dependent and independent relationships in an ecosystem.
Forest Ecosystem
Prairie Ecosystem
8.3.1: Identify natural (i.e., wildfire, flood, drought) and man-made changes (forest clear cutting, input of pollutants, filling in of marshland) to an ecosystem. Discuss how these changes affect the balance of an ecosystem.
Correlation last revised: 5/9/2018