third grade science overview
The performance expectations in
third grade help students formulate answers to questions such as: “What is
typical weather in different parts of the world and during different times of
the year? How can the impact of weather-related hazards be reduced? How do
organisms vary in their traits? How are plants, animals, and environments of
the past similar or different from current plants, animals, and environments?
What happens to organisms when their environment changes? How do equal and
unequal forces on an object affect the object? How can magnets be used?” Third
grade performance expectations include PS2,
LS1, LS2, LS3, LS4, ESS2, and ESS3 Disciplinary Core Ideas from the NRC
Framework. Students are able to organize and use data to describe typical
weather conditions expected during a particular season. By applying their
understanding of weather-related hazards, students are able to make a claim
about the merit of a design solution that reduces the impacts of such hazards.
Students are expected to develop an understanding of the similarities and
differences of organisms’ life cycles. An understanding that organisms have
different inherited traits, and that the environment can also affect the traits
that an organism develops, is acquired by students at this level. In addition,
students are able to construct an explanation using evidence for how the
variations in characteristics among individuals of the same species may provide
advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing. Students are expected
to develop an understanding of types of organisms that lived long ago and also
about the nature of their environments. Third graders are expected to develop
an understanding of the idea that when the environment changes some organisms
survive and reproduce, some move to new locations, some move into the
transformed environment, and some die. Students are able to determine the
effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object and the
cause and effect relationships of electric or magnetic interactions between two
objects not in contact with each other. They are then able to apply their
understanding of magnetic interactions to define a simple design problem that
can be solved with magnets. The crosscutting concepts of patterns; cause and
effect; scale, proportion, and quantity; systems and system models;
interdependence of science, engineering, and technology; and influence of
engineering, technology, and science on society and the natural world are
called out as organizing concepts for these disciplinary core ideas. In the
third grade performance expectations, students are expected to demonstrate
grade-appropriate proficiency in asking questions and defining problems;
developing and using models, planning and carrying out investigations,
analyzing and interpreting data, constructing explanations and designing
solutions, engaging in argument from evidence, and obtaining, evaluating, and
communicating information. Students are expected to use these practices to
demonstrate understanding of the core ideas.
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Third Grade Curriculum
Kit materials
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