Category: Middle School
Showing 3 topics.
MS-ESS1: Earth’s Place in the Universe = Solar System, Earth-Moon-Sun, Geologic Time, and Rock Strata
The MS-ESS1 bundle addresses Earth's place in the universe across four performance expectations: the scale and structure of the universe and solar system, cyclic patterns of the Earth-moon-sun system, the interpretation of rock strata and the geologic time scale, and the history of planet Earth revealed in the rock and fossil record. Together these standards ask middle school students to reason about space and time at scales that dwarf ordinary human experience, using models, data, and evidence to develop scientifically accurate mental frameworks for their planet's history and cosmic context.
MS-ESS2: Earth’s Systems = Plate Tectonics, the Water Cycle, Weather, and Climate
The MS-ESS2 bundle addresses Earth's dynamic systems through six performance expectations covering plate tectonics and the rock cycle, the cycling of water through Earth's systems, the complex interactions of air masses that produce weather, and the atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns that determine regional and global climate. Together these standards develop in middle school students a mechanistic, energy-based understanding of why Earth's surface is never at rest and why the atmosphere and oceans are always in motion.
MS-ESS3: Earth and Human Activity = Natural Resources, Natural Hazards, and Human Impacts
The MS-ESS3 bundle addresses the relationship between Earth's systems and human civilization through five performance expectations covering the geological origins of natural resource distributions, the interpretation of hazard data to forecast and mitigate catastrophic events, the role of human activities in altering Earth's systems including the biosphere, the connections between human population growth and resource consumption, and the scientific basis for and societal responses to global climate change. Together these standards develop in middle school students the scientific literacy needed to participate as informed citizens in the environmental decisions that will define the twenty-first century.