Category: Grade 5
Showing 4 topics.
5-ESS1-1: Stars and Apparent Brightness = Why the Sun Looks So Much Brighter Than Other Stars
Students support an argument that differences in the apparent brightness of the sun compared to other stars is due to their relative distances from Earth. The sun is not uniquely powerful among stars; it simply happens to be our nearest stellar neighbor. By gathering evidence about the distances of different stars and their apparent brightness, fifth graders develop one of the most fundamental insights in all of astronomy: that the night sky is populated by objects just like our sun, blazing at unimaginable distances, and that proximity rather than intrinsic power determines how bright a star appears from Earth.
5-ESS1-2: Shadows, Day and Night, and Seasonal Stars = Representing Patterns of Earth’s Motion
Students represent data in graphical displays to reveal patterns of daily changes in the length and direction of shadows, day and night, and the seasonal appearance of some stars in the night sky. This standard completes the K-5 sky observation sequence by asking students to represent their accumulated observational data in formal graphical displays, revealing the full suite of patterns produced by Earth's rotation, Earth's orbit around the sun, and the vast distances separating Earth from other stars.
5-ESS2-1 and 5-ESS2-2: Earth’s Four Systems = Modeling Interactions and Mapping Water Distribution
Students develop a model to describe ways the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere interact, and describe and graph the amounts and percentages of water in various Earth reservoirs. Together these two standards culminate the K-5 earth science sequence by organizing all of students' prior learning into a unified systems framework: Earth is not a collection of separate features but a deeply interconnected set of four interacting spheres whose exchanges of matter and energy produce the conditions that make our planet habitable.
5-ESS3-1: Protecting Earth’s Resources = How Communities Use Science to Care for the Environment
Students obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect Earth's resources and environment. This culminating standard for the K-5 earth science sequence asks students to research and synthesize real examples of community-level environmental action, connecting the scientific understanding of Earth's systems built across five years of learning to the social, civic, and technological dimensions of actually protecting those systems for future generations.