Fundamental Concepts and Principles Addressed (K-4)

Science as Inquiry

Abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry

• Ask a question about objects, organisms, and events in the environment.
• 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. Types of investigations include describing objects and organisms and classifying them.
• Simple instruments, such as magnifiers and rulers, provide more information than scientists obtain using only their senses.

Life Science

Characteristics of organisms

• Organisms have basic needs. For example, animals need air, water, and food. Organisms can survive only in environments in which their needs can be met. The world has many different environments, and distinct environments support the life of different types of organisms.
• Each plant and animal has different structures that serve different functions in growth, survival, and reproduction. For example, humans have distinct body structures for walking, holding, seeing, and talking.
• The behavior of individual organisms is influenced by internal cues (such as hunger) and external cues (such as a change in the environment). Humans and other organisms have senses that help them detect internal and external cues.

Life cycles of organisms

• Animals have life cycles that include being born, developing into adults, reproducing, and eventually dying. The details of this life cycle are different for different organisms.
• Plants and animals closely resemble their parents.

Organisms and their environments

• 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.

Science and Technology

Understandings about science and technology

• People have always had questions about their world. Science is one way of answering these questions and explaining the natural world.
• Scientists often work in teams with different individuals doing different things that contribute to the results.
• 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.

Science in Personal and Social Perspectives

Personal health

• Nutrition is essential to health. Students should understand how the body uses food and how various foods contribute to health and growth.

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 and water; some are produced from basic resources, such as food; and some are nonmaterial, such as beauty.

Changes in environments

• Environments are the space, conditions, and factors that affect an individual’s and a population’s ability to survive.

Science as a human endeavor

• Many people derive great pleasure from doing science.

Unifying Concepts and Processes

Evidence, models, and explanation

Constancy, change, and measurement

Form and function