Competency Assurance Documents

Academic Expectations and Demonstrators

Elementary

Goal 2: Students shall develop their abilities to apply core concepts and principles from mathematics, the sciences, the arts, the humanities, social studies, practical living studies, and vocational studies to what they will encounter throughout their lives.

2.1 The Nature of Science:

Experimental Design Students understand scientific ways of thinking and working and use those methods to solve real-life problems.

Elementary Demonstrators

• Design, conduct, and report an investigation or experiment.

• Identify variables that cause or influence an outcome.Infer and formulate explanations or predict an outcome based on data.

• Record and represent data in an organized form (e.g., tabular, graphic formats).

• Collect data by using a variety of observation techniques and measurement tools.

• Classify and order objects by one or more identifiable properties.

• Observe and communicate properties of objects or organisms using all senses.

2.2 Patterns and Change

Students identify, analyze, and use patterns such as cycles and trends to understand past and present events and predict possible future events.

Elementary Demonstrators

• Make predictions (extrapolate and interpolate) based on patterns.

• Demonstrate relationships among patterns.

• Recognize, describe, and create patterns (e.g., repeating, developmental, behavioral, symmetrical, cyclical) of objects or events.

• Classify objects according to more than one property or attribute.

• Classify objects according to one property or attribute.

• Identify and communicate common attributes of items in a group.

• Use senses to observe items; communicate similarities and/or differences.

2.3 Systems and Subsystems

Students identify and analyze systems and the ways their components work together or affect each other.

Elementary Demonstrators

• Create a system.

• Investigate system feedback and self-regulation.

• Analyze how the properties of the components of a system affect their function within the system.

• Distinguish between systems and subsystems and describe interactions between them.

• Classify systems based on functions or properties.

• Communicate functions of a system.

• Identify components of a system.

• Recognize things that work together.

2.4 Models and Scale

Students use the concept of scale and scientific models to explain the organization and functioning of living and nonliving things and predict other characteristics that might be observed.

Elementary Demonstrators

• Evaluate appropriateness of components and scale to a real object being modeled.

• Investigate the significance of perspective.

• Use models to depict the function of an object, event, or system.

• Represent a real event, object, or concept with a model.

• Investigate models to determine how things work.

• Investigate models that represent objects, events, or systems.

2.5 Constancy

Students understand that under certain conditions nature tends to remain the same or move toward a balance.

Elementary Demonstrators

• Investigate factors, which may disrupt constancy and describe their effects in a steady state system.

• Investigate and describe steady state systems and components of a system that work together to achieve constancy.

• Describe an event or system that includes a constant process.

• Identify, observe, and communicate recurring events.

• Demonstrators should be read from bottom to top, but need not be demonstrated sequentially.

2.6 Evolutions and Change Over Time

Students understand how living and nonliving things change over time and the factors that influence the changes.

Elementary Demonstrators

• Describe situations where one change causes another change.

• Investigate variables that influence change over time (evolution).

• Describe the sequence of steps in a change process.

• Identify and predict small and large scale changes.

• Observe and communicate change over time (evolution).

From: Transformations: A Curriculum Framework

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