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 to 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 events, classifying them, and doing a fair test (experimenting).
• Simple instruments, such as magnifiers and thermometers, provide more information than scientists obtain using only their senses.

Properties of objects and materials

• Objects have many observable properties, including size, shape, color, and temperature. These properties can be measured using tools, such as thermometers.
• Objects can be described by the properties of the materials from which they are made, and those properties can be used to separate or sort a group of objects.
• Materials can exist in different states—solid, liquid, and gas. Some common materials, such as water, can be changed from one state to another.

Objects in the sky

• The sun, moon, stars, clouds, birds, and airplanes all have properties, locations, and movements that can be observed and described.
• The sun provides the light and heat necessary to maintain the temperature of the earth.

Changes in the earth and sky

• Weather changes from day to day and over the seasons. Weather can be described by measurable quantities, such as temperature, wind direction and speed, and precipitation.
• Objects in the sky have patterns of movement.>

Science and Technology

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.
• People have always had problems and invented tools and techniques (ways of doing something) to solve problems.
• 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 they could not otherwise see, measure, and do.

Abilities to distinguish between natural objects and objects made by humans

• Objects can be categorized into two groups, natural and designed.

• Safety and security are basic needs of humans. Safety involves freedom from danger, risk, or injury. Student understandings include following safety rules.

Science and technology in local challenges

• People continue inventing new ways of doing things, solving problems, and getting work done. New ideas and inventions often affect other people.

Science as a human endeavor

• Science and technology have been practiced by people for a long time.
• Men and women have made a variety of contributions throughout the history of science and technology.
• Many people choose science as a career. Many people derive great pleasure from doing science.

Systems, order, and organization

Evidence, models, and explanation

Constancy, change, and measurement