2d: Students know earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, and floods change human and wildlife habitats.
5e: Students know the number and types of organisms an ecosystem can support depends on the resources available and on abiotic factors, such as quantities of light and water, a range of temperatures, and soil composition.
7. Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations.
Earthquakes may cause damage that disrupts people’s lives.
7th grade
3e: Students know that extinction of a species occurs when the environment changes and the adaptive characteristics of a species are insufficient for its survival.
4e: Students know fossils provide evidence of how life and environmental conditions have changed.
4g: Students know how to explain significant developments and extinctions of plant and animal life on the geologic time scale.
7: Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations.
9th-12th grade Earth Science
3c: Students know how to explain the properties of rocks based on the physical and chemical conditions in which they formed, including plate tectonic processes.
6c: Students know how Earth's climate has changed over time, corresponding to changes in Earth's geography, atmospheric composition, and other factors, such as solar radiation and plate movement.
9th-12th grade Biology
6b: Students know how to analyze changes in an ecosystem resulting from changes in climate, human activity, introduction of nonnative species, or changes in population size
8e: Students know how to analyze fossil evidence with regard to biological diversity, episodic speciation, and mass extinction.
9th-12th grade Investigation and Experimentation
Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations.
Additional Standards
Mathematics
Students solve problems involving fractions, ratios, proportions, and percentages.
Students calculate and solve problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Students analyze and use tables, graphs, and rules to solve problems.
Students compute the perimeter, area, and volume of common geometric objects and use the results to find measures of less common objects.
Students compute and analyze statistical measurements for data sets.
Students make decisions about how to approach problems.
Students use strategies, skills, and concepts in finding solutions.
Students organize and describe distributions of data by using a number of different methods.
Language Arts
Students read and understand grade-level-appropriate material.
Students write clear, coherent, and focused essays.
Students write narrative, expository, persuasive, and descriptive texts
Students write and speak with a command of standard English conventions appropriate to grade level.
Students deliver focused, coherent presentations that convey ideas clearly and relate to the background and interests of the audience.
Students deliver well-organized formal presentations.
National Science Education Content Standards
Grades 5-8
Earth and Space Science
The earth processes we see today, including erosion, movement of lithospheric plates, and changes in atmospheric composition, are similar to those that occurred in the past. Earth history is also influenced by occasional catastrophes, such as the impact of an asteroid or comet.
Fossils provide important evidence of how life and environmental conditions have changed
Life Science
Extinction of a species occurs when the environment changes and the adaptive characteristics of a species are insufficient to allow its survival. Fossils indicate that many organisms that lived long ago are extinct.
Science in Personal and Social Perspectives
Natural hazards can present personal and societal challenges because misidentifying the change or incorrectly estimating the rate and scale of change may result in either too little attention and significant human costs or too much cost for unneeded preventive measures.
History and Nature of Science
Scientists formulate and test their explanations of nature using observation, experiments, and theoretical and mathematical models. Although all scientific ideas are tentative and subject to change and improvement in principle, for most major ideas in science, there is much experimental and observational confirmation. Those ideas are not likely to change greatly in the future. Scientists do and have changed their ideas about nature when they encounter new experimental evidence that does not match their existing explanations.
It is part of scientific inquiry to evaluate the results of scientific investigations, experiments, observations, theoretical models, and the explanations proposed by other scientists.
Grades 9-12
Earth and Space Science
Interactions among the solid earth, the oceans, the atmosphere, and organisms have resulted in the ongoing evolution of the earth system.
Science in Personal and Social Perspectives
Some hazards, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and severe weather, are rapid and spectacular. But there are slow and progressive changes that also result in problems for individuals and societies. For example, change in stream channel position, erosion of bridge foundations, sedimentation in lakes and harbors, coastal erosions, and continuing erosion and wasting of soil and landscapes can all negatively affect society.
Natural and human-induced hazards present the need for humans to assess potential danger and risk. Many changes in the environment designed by humans bring benefits to society, as well as cause risks.
History and Nature of Science
Science distinguishes itself from other ways of knowing and from other bodies of knowledge through the use of empirical standards, logical arguments, and skepticism, as scientists strive for the best possible explanations about the natural world.
Because all scientific ideas depend on experimental and observational confirmation, all scientific knowledge is, in principle, subject to change as new evidence becomes available. In areas where data or understanding are incomplete, such as the details of human evolution or questions surrounding global warming, new data may well lead to changes in current ideas or resolve current conflicts.
The historical perspective of scientific explanations demonstrates how scientific knowledge changes by evolving over time, almost always building on earlier knowledge.
NEW STUFF 12/05
Calif. State Standards
6th Grade Science:
1. Plate tectonics accounts for important features of Earth's surface and major geologic events.
1f Students know how to explain major features of California geology (including mountains, faults, volcanoes) in terms of plate tectonics.
2. Topography is reshaped by the weathering of rock and soil and by the transportation and deposition of sediment.
7 Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations.
d. Communicate the steps and results from an investigation in written reports and oral presentations.
e. Recognize whether evidence is consistent with a proposed explanation.
f. Read a topographic map and a geologic map for evidence provided on the maps and construct and interpret a simple scale map.
h. Identify changes in natural phenomena over time without manipulating the phenomena.
9-12 Grade Earth Science:
3. Plate tectonics operating over geologic time has changed the patterns of land, sea, and mountains on Earth's surface.
b. Students know the principal structures that form at the three different kinds of plate boundaries.
c. Students know how to explain the properties of rocks based on the physical and chemical conditions in which they formed, including plate tectonic processes.
f. Students know the explanation for the location and properties of volcanoes that are due to hot spots and the explanation for those that are due to subduction.
9-12 Grade Investigation and Experimentation:
d. Formulate explanations by using logic and evidence
h. Read and interpret topographic and geologic maps
i. Analyze the locations, sequences, or time intervals that are characteristic of natural phenomena
k. Recognize the cumulative nature of scientific evidence
l. Analyze situations and solve problems that require combining and applying concepts from more than one area of science
Additional Standards:
1. Mathematics
Students solve problems involving fractions, ratios, proportions, and percentages.
Students calculate and solve problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Students compute and analyze statistical measurements for data sets.
Students make decisions about how to approach problems.
Students use strategies, skills, and concepts in finding solutions.
Students organize and describe distributions of data by using a number of different methods.
2. Language Arts
Students read and understand grade-level-appropriate material.
Students write clear, coherent, and focused essays.
Students write narrative, expository, persuasive, and descriptive texts
Students write and speak with a command of standard English conventions appropriate to grade level.
Students deliver focused, coherent presentations that convey ideas clearly and relate to the background and interests of the audience.
Students deliver well-organized formal presentations.
5-8 Grade Science as Inquiry
Most standards are covered.
5-8 Grade Earth and Space Science:
• Land forms are the result of a combination of constructive and destructive forces. Constructive forces include crustal deformation, volcanic eruption, and deposition of sediment, while destructive forces include weathering and erosion.
• Some changes in the solid earth can be described as the "rock cycle." Old rocks at the earth's surface weather, forming sediments that are buried, then compacted, heated, and often recrystallized into new rock. Eventually, those new rocks may be brought to the surface by the forces that drive plate motions, and the rock cycle continues.
• The earth processes we see today, including erosion, movement of lithospheric plates, and changes in atmospheric composition, are similar to those that occurred in the past.
5-8 Grade History and Nature of Science
• Scientists formulate and test their explanations of nature using observation, experiments, and theoretical and mathematical models. Although all scientific ideas are tentative and subject to change and improvement in principle, for most major ideas in science, there is much experimental and observational confirmation. Those ideas are not likely to change greatly in the future. Scientists do and have changed their ideas about nature when they encounter new experimental evidence that does not match their existing explanations.
• It is part of scientific inquiry to evaluate the results of scientific investigations, experiments, observations, theoretical models, and the explanations proposed by other scientists.
d
