Category: NGSS
Showing 29 topics.
4-ESS2-2: Patterns of Earth’s Features – Analyzing Maps to Understand Tectonic and Geological Patterns
Students analyze and interpret data from maps to describe patterns of Earth's features, including topographic maps of land and ocean floor, and maps of mountains, continental boundaries, volcanoes, and earthquakes. By identifying the striking spatial correlations among these features, students begin to develop the foundational understanding of plate tectonics that will be fully developed in middle school: that Earth's surface is broken into large moving plates whose boundaries are the sites of most of the planet's geological activity.
4-ESS3-2: Reducing the Impact of Natural Earth Processes – Generating and Comparing Engineering Solutions
Students generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impacts of natural Earth processes on humans. Moving beyond weather-related hazards studied in Grade 3, fourth graders now apply engineering design thinking to the full range of natural geological and hydrological processes including earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, generating and comparing solutions based on evidence and scientific understanding of how each hazard operates.
4-ESS1-1: Rock Formations and Fossils – Reading Earth’s History in Layers of Stone
Students identify evidence from patterns in rock formations and fossils in rock layers to support an explanation for changes in a landscape over time. Rock strata and the fossils preserved within them are Earth's own archive of its history, and fourth graders learn to read that archive as geologists do: by recognizing that layer sequences record time, that the organisms preserved in each layer tell us about the conditions that existed when those sediments were deposited, and that changes in the fossil record from layer to layer reveal how environments have changed across millions of years.
4-ESS2-1: Weathering and Erosion – Observing and Measuring How Water, Ice, Wind, and Plants Shape the Land
Students make observations and measurements to provide evidence of the effects of weathering or the rate of erosion by water, ice, wind, or vegetation. This investigation-centered standard moves fourth graders beyond simply knowing that weathering and erosion occur to actually measuring the variables that control how fast they happen, developing quantitative experimental thinking alongside a deeper understanding of the processes that continuously reshape Earth's surface.
3-ESS2-1: Seasonal Weather Patterns – Representing and Analyzing Weather Data
Students represent data in tables and graphical displays to describe typical weather conditions expected during a particular season. This standard moves students from informal weather observation to formal data analysis, using bar graphs and tables of temperature, precipitation, and wind direction to reveal seasonal patterns that support predictions about future weather.
3-ESS2-2: World Climates – Describing and Comparing Climates Across Different Regions
Students obtain and combine information to describe climates in different regions of the world. By gathering and synthesizing information from books, maps, data sources, and images, students build an evidence-based understanding of how climate varies across the globe and what factors, including latitude, elevation, and proximity to water, drive those differences.
3-ESS3-1: Weather-Related Natural Hazards – Evaluating Design Solutions That Reduce Their Impact
Students make a claim about the merit of a design solution that reduces the impacts of a weather-related hazard. From flood barriers and wind-resistant roofs to lightning rods and drought-tolerant landscaping, this engineering-integrated standard asks third graders to apply scientific understanding of weather hazards to evaluate how well specific solutions protect communities, using evidence to support their claims.
2-ESS2-3: Where Water Is Found on Earth – Oceans, Ice, Rivers, Lakes, and More
Students obtain information to identify where water is found on Earth and that it can be solid or liquid. From the vast salt oceans to the microscopic film of water around a soil particle, this standard builds a comprehensive, evidence-grounded picture of the hydrosphere and establishes the critical understanding that fresh water, the water humans and most land animals depend on, is rare and unevenly distributed across the planet.
2-ESS1-1: Earth Events Fast and Slow – Evidence That Earth Changes Over Many Timescales
Students use information from several sources to provide evidence that Earth events can occur quickly or slowly. From volcanic eruptions that reshape a landscape in hours to the slow carving of a canyon over millions of years, this standard builds the foundational understanding that Earth is always changing and that different processes operate on vastly different timescales.
2-ESS2-1: Wind and Water Erosion – Designing Solutions to Protect the Land
Students compare multiple solutions designed to slow or prevent wind or water from changing the shape of the land. This engineering-integrated standard connects the physical science of erosion directly to the human need to protect farmland, coastlines, and communities, introducing second graders to the design process as a response to a real-world Earth science problem.