Kindergarten ♦ First Grade ♦ Second Grade ♦ Third Grade ♦ Fourth Grade ♦ Fifth Grade ♦ Sixth Grade ♦ Seventh Grade ♦ Eighth Grade
Kindergarten
Crosscutting Concepts: Patterns in the natural world can be observed, used to describe phenomena, and used as evidence.
Disciplinary Core Ideas:
PS3.B: Sunlight warms Earth’s surface.
LS1.C: All animals need food in order to live and grow. They obtain their food from plants or from other animals. Plants need water and light to live and grow.
ESS2.D: Weather is the combination of sunlight, wind, snow, or rain, and temperature in a particular region at a particular time. People measure these conditions to describe and record the weather and to notice patterns over time.
1st Grade
Crosscutting Concepts: Patterns in the natural world can be observed, used to describe phenomena, and used as evidence.
Disciplinary Core Ideas:
PS4.B: Objects can only be seen if light is available to illuminate them or if they give off their own light.
PS4.B: Light travels from place to place. Some materials allow light to pass through them, others allow only some light through, and others block all the light and create a dark shadow on any surface beyond them, where the light cannot reach. Mirrors can be used to redirect a light beam.
ESS1.A: Patterns of the motion of the sun, moon, and stars in the sky can be observed, described, and predicted.
2nd Grade
Crosscutting Concepts: Patterns in the natural world can be observed, used to describe phenomena, and used as evidence.
Disciplinary Core Ideas:
ESS2.B: Maps show where things are located. One can map the shapes and kinds of land and water in any area.
ESS2.C: Water is found in the ocean, rivers, lakes, and ponds. Water exists as solid ice and in liquid form.
3rd Grade
Crosscutting Concepts: Patterns of change can be used to make predictions.
Disciplinary Core Ideas:
ESS2.D: Weather, which varies from day to day and seasonally throughout the year, is the condition of the atmosphere at a given place and time.
ESS2.D: Weather and Climate Climate describes a range of an area’s typical weather conditions and the extent to which those conditions vary over years.
4th Grade
Disciplinary Core Ideas:
ESS2.B: The locations of mountain ranges, deep ocean trenches, ocean floor structures, earthquakes, and volcanoes occur in patterns. Most earthquakes and volcanoes occur in bands that are often along the boundaries between continents and oceans. Major mountain chains form inside continents or near their edges. Maps can help locate the different land and water features areas of Earth.
5th Grade
Crosscutting Concepts: Scale, Proportion, and Quantity – Natural objects exist from the very small to the immensely large.
Disciplinary Core Ideas:
PS3.D: The energy released [from] food was once energy from the sun that was captured by plants in the chemical process that forms plant matter (from air and water).
LS2.A: The food of almost any kind of animal can be traced back to plants (producers). Organisms are related in food webs in which some animals eat plants for food and other animals eat the animals that eat plants (either way they are consumers). Some organisms, such as fungi and bacteria, break down dead organisms (both plants or plants parts and animals) and therefore operate as “decomposers.” Decomposition eventually restores (recycles) some materials back to the soil.
LS2.B: Matter cycles between the air and soil and among plants, animals, and microbes as these organisms live and die. Organisms obtain gasses, and water, from the environment, and release waste matter (gas, liquid, or solid) back into the environment.
ESS1.A: The sun is a star that appears larger and brighter than other stars because it is closer. Stars range greatly in their distance from Earth.
ESS1.B: The orbits of Earth around the sun and of the moon around Earth, together with the rotation of Earth about an axis between its North and South poles, cause observable patterns. These include day and night; daily changes in the length and direction of shadows; and different positions of the sun, moon, and stars at different times of the day, month, and year.
ESS2.C: Nearly all of Earth’s available water is in the ocean. Most freshwater is in glaciers or underground; only a tiny fraction is in streams, lakes, wetlands, and the atmosphere.
6th Grade
Disciplinary Core Ideas:
ESS2.B: Plate movements are responsible for most continental and ocean floor features and for the distribution of most rocks and minerals within Earth’s crust.
ESS2.C: Water continually cycles among land, ocean, and atmosphere via transpiration, evaporation, condensation and crystallization, and precipitation, as well as downhill flows on land.
ESS2.D: The tilt of the earth’s rotational axis causes a pattern of uneven heating and cooling that changes seasonally and establishes global patterns of climate and weather.
7th Grade
Disciplinary Core Ideas:
LS2.B: Food webs are models that demonstrate how matter and energy is transferred between producers, consumers, and decomposers as the three groups interact within an ecosystem. Transfers of matter into and out of the physical environment occur at every level. Decomposers recycle nutrients from dead plant or animal matter back to the soil in terrestrial environments or to the water in aquatic environments.
8th Grade
Disciplinary Core Ideas:
PS2.B: The magnitude of the gravitational force depends on the masses and distances between interacting objects. Long-range gravitational interactions govern the evolution and maintenance of large-scale structures in the universe and the patterns of motion within them.
ESS1.A: Patterns of the apparent motion of the sun, the moon, and stars in the sky can be observed, described, predicted, and explained with models.
ESS1.B: This model of the solar system can explain tides (including spring and neap), eclipses of the sun and the moon. Earth’s spin axis is fixed in direction over the short-term but tilted relative to its orbit around the sun. The seasons are a result of that tilt and are caused by the differential intensity of sunlight on different areas of Earth across the year.