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Kindergarten
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Grade 1
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Grade 2
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Grade 3
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Grade 4
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Grade 5
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ONE UNDER THE SUN: PLANT AND ANIMAL INTERACTIONS WITH THE SUN AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT
Students will make observations about plants and animals to learn that they need food, light, and water to live and grow. Students will also learn that these essential needs are provided by the environment where they live. Using knowledge learned, students will design a structure that helps protect plants, animals, or humans from the heat of the sun. NYSSLS Primary Indicators: K-LS1-1, K-ESS3-1, K-P3-1, K-PS3-2 |
SPOT THE DIFFERENCES: CHANGES TO THE ENVIRONMENT
Students build on their intuitive sense of patterns as they sort a variety of collections noting similarities, differences, and repeating patterns within animals’ and plants’ needs. Students explore patterns in their daily activities and in the world around them, and discuss patterns that repeat in longer cycles of time. From these patterns, students will communicate solutions and ideas of how humans can reduce the impact of their environment. NYSSLS Primary Indicators: K-ESS2-2, K-ESS3-3, |
IT'S A MATTER OF PUSHING OR PULLING: HOW OBJECTS MOVE
Students will explore patterns in different systems that move and how they operate, as each system moves in a different but predictable pattern. Students will then design and build a contraption to change the speed or direction of an object with a push or a pull. As a result, students build a grade-level-appropriate concept of systems and an understanding of moving objects. NYSSLS Primary Indicators: K-PS2-1, K-PS2-2 |
EYES TO THE SKY: INVESTIGATING WEATHER PATTERNS
What is the weather like today and how is it different than yesterday? Students will develop a solid foundation for understanding weather and its impact on their daily life. Students will observe, explore, discuss, measure and formulate definitions and explanations. NYSSLS Primary Indicators: K-ESS2-1, KPS1-1, K-ESS3-2 |
WATT'S SO BRIGHT: DISCOVERING LIGHT PROPERTIES
Students will explore the physical science concept of light, and investigate how the phenomena travels. Students will use flashlights to collect evidence of how light travels and how it interacts with different materials as they manipulate the path of light and experiment with several materials. They will design a device to help communicate with light by the concept of a lighthouse. NYSSLS Primary Indicators: 1-PS4-2, 1-PS4-3, 1-PS4-4 |
LEND ME YOUR HEARS: DISCOVERING SOUND PROPERTIES
How are sounds made and how does sound travel from one place to another? Students will explore sounds and vibrations and relate simple terms like loud, soft, high and low to the concepts of volume and pitch. Students will make a model of a wave and learn that sound travels through air, liquids, and solids. When sound waves bounce off large, hard surfaces, they create echoes. Students will investigate echoes and learn how animals use echoes to communicate and survive. NYSSLS Primary Indicators: 1-PS1-1, 1-PS4-4 |
TRAITS AND BEHAVIORS: PLANTS AND ANTS
Students explore, sort, compare, and experience the similarities, differences, and basic behaviors of animals. Students discuss how animal and plant parents and offspring are very similar to each other but not the same. Ants in this unit encourage careful observation using a hand lens, recording observations in words and pictures as students build on their intuitive ideas about the basic behaviors of animals. As a result, students will design a solution to solve a human problem that mimics a plant or animal feature. NYSSLS Primary Indicators: 1-LS3-1, 1-LS1-2, 1-LS1-1 |
IT'S JUST A PHASE: PATTERNS IN THE SKY
What objects are in the sky and how do they seem to move? Students will learn, observe, and describe the sky, as well as the concepts of patterns in the motion of Sun, moon, and stars. Through collecting data of the Sun, moon, and stars, students will be able to predict future motion and determine patterns of these celestial bodies. NYSSLS Primary Indicators: 1-ESS1-1, 1-ESS1-2 |
MATTER MATTERS: PROPERTIES OF MATTER
Students will consider the states of matter. Students will explore solids and liquids may have different states based on their temperatures, and that changes may happen when they are heated or cooled. The Engineering Design Challenge involves creating and designing a cooler to keep ice from melting. NYSSLS Primary Indicators: 2-PS1-1, 2-PS1-4, 2-PS1-2, 2-PS1-3 |
A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OVER LAND AND WATER: MODELS, MAPS, AND PATTERNS
Students focus on identifying and creating various land and water forms. The strand also layers mapping objectives that will teach students to not only identify landforms and bodies of water, but also locate them on a map of New York State. The kit culminates with a Project-Based Assessment where students create a relief model and map of a fictitious New York State park that includes major landforms and bodies of water. NYSSLS Primary Indicators: 2-ESS2-2, 2-ESS2-3 |
LEAN ON ME: HOW PLANTS AND ANIMALS DEPEND ON EACH OTHER
Students will explore the needs of plant life and how plants depend on water and light. This unit will also look the different habitats on the earth and how they compare to each other. Lastly the students will examine the important role that insects play in pollination and will design and build a hand pollinator. NYSSLS Primary Indicators: 2-LS2-1, 2-LS4-1, 2-LS2-2 |
WEATHERING THE CHANGE: EROSION PROCESSES
After students build age-appropriate understandings of earth materials, students compare how water and wind interact with different landforms. Using this information, students are able to provide evidence that these events can happen quickly or slowly. As a culmination, students will compare designed solutions for building a structure to prevent a riverbank from eroding. NYSSLS Primary Indicators: 2-ESS1-1, 2-ESS2-1 |