Fundamental Concepts and Principles Addressed (K-4)

Abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry

• Ask a question about objects, organisms, and events in the environment.
• Plan and conduct a simple investigation.
• Employ simple equipment and tools to gather data and extend the senses.
• Use data to construct a reasonable explanation.
• Communicate investigations and explanations.

Understandings about scientific inquiry

• Scientific investigations involve asking and answering a question and comparing the answer with what scientists already know about the world.
• Scientists use different kinds of investigations, depending on the questions they are trying to answer.
• Simple instruments provide more information than scientists obtain using only their senses.
• Scientists develop explanations using observations (evidence) and what they already know about the world (scientific knowledge).
• Scientists make the results of their investigations public.
• Scientists review and ask questions about the results of other scientists’ work.

Life Science

Characteristics of organisms

• Organisms have basic needs. Each animal has different structures that serve different functions in growth and survival.
• The behavior of individual organisms is influenced by internal cues (such as hunger) and by external cues (such as change in the environment).

Life cycles of organisms

• Many characteristics of an organism are inherited from the parents of the organism, but other characteristics result from an individual’s interactions with the environment.

Organisms and their environments

• All animals depend on plants. Some animals eat plants for food. Other animals eat animals that eat the plants.
• An organism’s patterns of behavior are related to the nature of that organism’s environment, including the kinds and numbers of other organisms present, the availability of food and resources, and the physical characteristics of the environment. When the environment changes, animals survive and reproduce, and others die or move to new locations.
• All organisms cause changes in the environment where they live. Some of these changes are detrimental to the organism or other organisms, whereas others are beneficial.
• Humans depend on their natural and constructed environments. Humans change environments in ways that can be either beneficial or detrimental for themselves and other organisms.

Science and Technology

Abilities of technological design

• Identify a simple problem.
• Propose a solution.
• Evaluate a product or design.
• Communicate a problem, design, and solution.

Understandings about science and technology

• People have always had questions about their world. Science is one way of answering questions and explaining the natural world.
• Scientists and engineers often work in teams with different individuals doing different things that contribute to the results.
• Women and men of all ages, backgrounds, and groups engage in a variety of scientific and technological work.
• Tools help scientists make better observations, measurements, and equipment for investigations. They help scientists see, measure, and do things that they could not otherwise see, measure, and do.

Abilities to distinguish between natural objects and objects made by humans

• Some objects occur in nature; others have been designed and made by people to enhance the quality of life.

Types of resources

• Resources are things that we get from the living and nonliving environment to meet the needs and wants of a population.
• Some resources are basic materials, such as air, water, and soil; some are produced from basic resources, such as food, fuel and building materials; and some resources are nonmaterial, such as quiet places, beauty, security, and safety.

Changes in environments

• Environments are the space, conditions, and factors that affect an individual’s and a population’s ability to survive and their quality of life.
• Changes in environments can be natural or influenced by humans. Some changes are good, some are bad, and some are neither good or bad.
• Some environmental changes occur slowly, and others occur rapidly.

History and Nature of Science

Science as a human endeavor

• Although men and women using scientific inquiry have learned much about the objects, events, and phenomena in nature, much more remains to be understood. Science will never be finished.
• Many people choose science as a career and devote their entire lives to studying it. Many people derive great pleasure from doing science.

Unifying Concepts and Processes

Systems, order, and organization

Evidence, model, and explanation

Constancy, change, and measurement

Evolution and equilibrium

Form and function