Category: High School (9–12)
Showing 3 topics.
HS-ESS1: Earth’s Place in the Universe = Big Bang, Stellar Life Cycles, and Earth’s Deep History
The HS-ESS1 bundle spans six performance expectations addressing the physical processes that shaped the universe and Earth from the Big Bang to the present. Students evaluate evidence for cosmological origins, model stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis, use mathematical representations of orbital mechanics, assess evidence for plate tectonics, and analyze the rock and fossil record using absolute dating methods. Together these standards develop in high school students the quantitative and evidence-based reasoning required to understand Earth not as a static backdrop to human history but as a 4.6-billion-year-old dynamic planet embedded in a 13.8-billion-year-old universe.
HS-ESS2: Earth’s Systems = Plate Tectonics, Climate Modeling, and the Carbon Cycle
The HS-ESS2 bundle addresses Earth's systems through seven performance expectations covering the full scope of geodynamics, climate science, and biogeochemical cycling. Students develop quantitative models of tectonic landform formation, evaluate feedback mechanisms in Earth's climate system, model thermal convection in Earth's interior, analyze how energy variations drive climate change, trace the interactions of the hydrologic and rock cycles, construct models of the global carbon cycle, and examine the coevolution of life and Earth's surface environment. Together these standards develop the scientific literacy required to engage quantitatively and critically with the most consequential Earth science questions of the twenty-first century.
HS-ESS3: Earth and Human Activity = Resource Management, Climate Change, and Sustainability
The HS-ESS3 bundle addresses the relationship between Earth's systems and human civilization through six performance expectations covering the geoscience basis of global resource distribution and management, the design of cost-effective solutions to environmental challenges, the connections between biodiversity and human resource security, the engineering of systems to minimize human environmental impacts, the scientific basis for climate change projections and regional impacts, and the computational modeling of relationships among Earth's systems under anthropogenic modification. Together these standards develop the scientific, quantitative, and evaluative reasoning required for informed citizenship in the era of planetary-scale human influence.