Science as Inquiry

• Ask a question about objects, organisms, and events in an 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.
• Scientists use different kinds of investigations, depending on the questions they are trying to answer.
• Simple instruments, such as magnifiers and rulers, provide more information than scientists obtain using only their senses.
• Scientists develop explanations using observations.
• Scientists make the results of their investigations public.
• Scientists review and ask questions about the results of other scientists’ work.

Characteristics of organisms

• Organisms have basic needs; plants require air water, nutrients, and light. Organisms can survive only in environments in which their needs are met.
• Each plant has different structures that serve different functions in growth, survival, and reproduction.

Life cycles of organisms

• Plants have life cycles that include developing into adults, reproducing, and eventually dying.
• Plants closely resemble their parents.
• Many characteristics of an organism are inherited from the parents of the organism, but other characteristics result from interaction with the environment.

Organisms and their environments

• All animals depend on plants.
• An organism’s patterns of behavior are related to the nature of that organism’s environment. When the environment changes, some plants survive and reproduce, and others die.

Earth and Space Science

Properties of earth materials

• Earth materials, such as soil and water, are useful in growing plants.

Science and Technology

Abilities of technological design

• Identify a simple problem.
• Propose a solution.
• Implementing proposed solutions.
• 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 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 they could not otherwise see, measure, and do.

Abilities to distinguish between natural objects and objects made by humans

• Some objects occur in nature while others have been designed by people.
• Objects can be categorized into two groups, natural and designed.

Science in Personal and Social Perspectives

Science and technology in local challenges

• People continue inventing new ways of doing things, solving problems, and getting work done.

Science as a human endeavor

• Many people choose science as a career and devote their lives to studying it. Many people derive great pleasure from doing science.

Systems, order, and organization

Evidence, models, and explanation

Constancy, change, and measurement

Form and function