Life Science Interdependent – Relationships in Ecosystems: Students explore how relationships are interdependent in ecosystems, the dynamics, functioning, and resilience of an ecosystem, how changes in biodiversity can influence human’s resources, how humans impact the biodiversity of an ecosystem, and ways we can develop solutions to preserve the ecosystem services humans rely on.
Life Science – Growth, Development & Reproduction of Organisms: Students explore how organisms reproduce and transfer their genetic information to their offspring. They learn how traits are inherited, variation of traits, how mutations may result in changes to living things that can be harmful or beneficial, and how humans have the capacity to influence certain characteristics of organisms by selective breeding (natural vs. artificial selection).
Life Science – Natural Selection & Adaptations: Students explore evidence of common ancestry and diversity of living things, such as the fossil record, anatomical similarities and differences between various organisms living today compared to those in the fossil record, and comparisons of embryological development of different species. They learn about adaptations and natural selection, and how traits that support successful survival and reproduction in an environment become more common.
Students will identify central ideas and key supporting details, as well as develop and answer questions related to topics, key ideas, and claims within informational text(s). Through both discussion and writing, students will explore topics and convey appropriate details relevant to support a given or student-created topic.
Physical Science – Forces & Interactions: Students explore the relationship between force and motion, and how electric, magnetic and gravitational forces interact with objects.
Multiplication and Division: Students will grow in their abilities to multiply and divide by working with multi-digit numbers. Students will also work with multi-step story problems with all four operations.
UPDATED FOR 2021-22: Operations in Base 10: Students will develop their skills at adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing multi-digit whole numbers and multi-digit decimals.
Physical Science – Energy: Students learn about energy, conservation of energy, energy transfer, and the relationship between energy and forces.
UPDATED FOR 2021-22: Becoming a Reader and Writer empowers students with emergent and beginning literacy skills. This unit should be paired with the Reading Foundations which focus on the acquisition of phonological awareness and phonics which are essential foundations for reading and writing. It is essential that these skills are not taught in isolation, but applied within students reading and writing.
In this unit, students will learn to use questioning to look deeper at texts and to identify the main topic/central idea and details to support that main topic within an informational text. They will learn to make connections between and within texts. The students will summarize their understanding during conversation and in writing informational texts.
