Aligned to Kindergarten Standards
Structure and Function: Exploring Design
Students discover the design process, identify products around them designed by engineers, and use what they’ve learned to design their own paintbrushes.
Pushes and Pulls
Students investigate different pushes and pulls and apply what they know to a swing-set installation project.
Structure and Function: Human Body
Students explore the relationship between structure and function in the human body and then design a cast.
Animals and Algorithms
Students explore the ways that people control and use technology as well as program their own digital animations.
Sunlight and Weather
Students learn about the sun's warming effect on Earth. They investigate how the sun affects different Earth materials, which leads to how the sun affects our weather. Students learn how to describe the weather to make observations and collect data. They use this data to describe patterns over time, which helps to predict the weather. Students view a local weather forecast to understand how the weather impacts their daily lives. They practice how to dress for the day by dressing Angelina, Mylo, or Suzi based on a forecast. Then they use the design process to design a structure that can reduce the sun's warming effect.
Living Things: Needs and Impacts
Students investigate the needs of living things. During an outdoor walk, students look for plants and animals and consider how their needs are met in their natural environment. Then they explore how living things impact the natural environment. Students participate in a simulation to observe how an animal impacts the natural environment to meet its needs. They then explore human needs and wants and how humans impact the natural environment, both positively and negatively. In an exercise to reduce waste, students use the design process to build a new game or toy out of reusable materials.
Aligned to First-Grade Standards
Light and Sound
Students investigate light and sound and then design a tool to communicate over a distance.
Light: Observing the Sun, Moon, and Stars
Students build upon their knowledge of light and then design a playground structure that protects students from UV radiation.
Animal Adaptations
Students learn about animal adaptations and apply what they’ve learned to design a shoe made for desert exploration.
Animated Storytelling
Students build computational thinking skills by creating animations based on their own short stories.
Designs Inspired by Nature
Students investigate how offspring are like their parents. They model animals' patterns of behavior that help them survive. They learn how plants and animals have external parts that help them meet their needs. With this understanding, students follow the design process to build a model of an outdoor shelter that is inspired by plant and animal external parts.
Aligned to Second-Grade Standards
Materials Science: Properties of Matter
Students explore materials science and devise a way to keep popsicles cold — without a cooler.
Materials Science: Form and Function
Students research the variety of ways that animals disperse seeds and pollinate plants and then use what they know to design a gardening device.
The Changing Earth
Students explore how the surface of the Earth is always changing and then design solutions for a fictional community threatened by a landslide.
Grids and Games
Students learn about the sequence and structure required in computer programs and work in teams to build tablet games.
Living Things: Diversity of Life
Students learn about the diversity of life in habitats, or biodiversity. They observe different habitats and the living things that grow in them. They engage in three scenarios to learn the importance of having many different organisms in a habitat. Next, students investigate how much water and sunlight plants need to grow in an environment. They use the design process to design a planter garden to grow in a specific environment.
Aligned to Third-Grade Standards
Stability and Motion: Science of Flight
Students learn about the forces involved in flight and then design a solution to deliver aid supplies via an aircraft.
Stability and Motion: Forces and Interactions
Students explore simple machines such as wheel and axles, levers, the inclined plane, and more and then use what they know to rescue a trapped zoo animal.
Variation of Traits
Students investigate the differences between inherited genetic traits and traits that are learned or influenced by the environment and then model how the gene for a plant’s stem color is passed on.
Programming Patterns
Students discover the power of modularity and abstraction and then use what they know to create a video game for a tablet.
Weather: Factors and Hazards
Students explore, collect, and classify data related to three factors that affect weather: precipitation, temperature, and wind. They contrast weather and climate using the three factors in their descriptions. Students explore different types of weather hazards, including those in their region. They design a solution that reduces the impact of a weather-related hazard.
Life Cycles and Survival
Students are introduced to life cycles. They compare and contrast different animal life cycles to identify common features and specific differences. Students deepen their understanding of life cycles as they investigate the life cycle of honeybees. They learn that worker bees have an important relationship with flowering plants that connects their life cycles. Students investigate whether living in a group makes honeybees more or less susceptible to hazards. Then students design a bee habitat that promotes the survival of bees. They create a public service campaign to share their designs to raise awareness of the importance of bees.
Environmental Changes
Students learn about Earth's habitats and how these habitats support life. Students examine fossils and investigate what fossils reveal about how organisms and habitats adapt and change over time. Students identify factors that cause environmental changes and simulate the effect that changes have on living things. Then they take a deeper look at specific examples of environmental changes in their own habitat. Students use the design process to explore one problem caused by environmental change and develop an action plan to reduce or stop future damage.
Aligned to Fourth-Grade Standards
Input/Output: Computer Systems
Students explore how computers work and then create a reaction-time computer program to assess a baseline before a concussion occurs.
Input/Output: Human Brain
Students learn about stimuli and responses and then use what they know to create a video to teach children about concussions.
Waves and Properties of Light
Students observe the amplitude and wavelength of waves in a simulation and describe their patterns. They learn that waves move energy from one place to another, which can cause objects to move. They learn that colors are determined by the wavelengths of light through an investigation using the primary colors of light. Then students explore how light interacts with different materials that are transparent, translucent, and opaque. They use the design process to design a game incorporating the knowledge and skills about light that they have gained throughout the module.
Organisms: Structure and Function
Students learn the characteristics of living things and look for similarities among organisms. Students examine a wide range of organisms, exploring their unique internal and external structures to understand how these structures support the organism's survival and combine with other structures to function as part of a larger system. Students then apply the knowledge and skills that they have gained as they work through the design process to research, design, and build a model prosthesis for an injured animal.
Earth: Past, Present, and Future
Students explore natural features on Earth. They learn about different landforms and bodies of water. Students take a deeper look at the origins of landforms as they learn about tectonic plates and plate boundaries. They examine how landforms have changed over time due to weathering and erosion. Students investigate how mechanical and chemical weathering impacts the Earth, and they identify examples of weathering in their local area. Students use the design process to create a documentary that explains how one of Earth's landforms has been shaped over time.
Earth: Human Impact and Natural Disasters
Students learn about the relationship between humans and the environment. They begin the module by activating knowledge about natural resources. They learn how to reduce the impact that humans have on the environment and use the design process to create an upcycled project. Then students investigate natural disasters, and they design emergency preparedness kits to demonstrate their understanding of the challenges that natural disasters pose. Students follow the design process to generate a plan to reduce the human impact on Earth or to lessen the impact of natural disasters on humans.
Energy Exploration
Students engage in explorations of energy-related phenomena. They make observations, pose questions, and make connections as they investigate energy transfers. Throughout the module, students explore connections to careers and to the necessity of energy in real life as they visit multiple business owners through the Main Street interactive experience. To deepen their understanding of energy, students design an investigation to test what happens when marbles collide on a track. Each business owner presents a problem that needs to be solved. Students select a problem and use the design process to apply scientific ideas to design, test, and refine a device that converts energy from one form to another.
Aligned to Fifth-Grade Standards
Robotics and Automation
Students explore the ways that robots are used in today’s world and then design a mobile robot that can remove hazardous materials from a disaster site.
Robotics and Automation: Challenge
Students explore mechanical design and computer programming and then design an automatic guided vehicle to deliver supplies in a hospital.
Infection: Detection
Students explore the transmission of infection and run an experiment to help find ways to prevent the spread of illness.
Infection: Modeling and Simulation
Students investigate models and simulations and apply their knowledge to program a model that simulates the spread of infections.
Matter: Properties and Reactions
Students learn about the three states of matter. They investigate mixtures of different materials that lead to new substances and conserve mass. Students design a test that demonstrates that an item has the required mechanical properties.
Ecosystems: Flow of Matter and Energy
Students learn about Earth's ecosystems and how energy flows from the sun to plants and from plants to animals. Students create a model to describe photosynthesis and explain how energy from the sun is introduced into an ecosystem. Students use evidence to defend the claim that plants get the materials they need for growth mainly from air and water. Students learn how energy flows through an ecosystem and explore a simulation about how an ecosystem can become unbalanced. Finally, students use the design process to develop an action plan to protect plants and animals in an ecosystem that has become unbalanced due to human activity.
Patterns in the Universe
Students develop an understanding that stars are balls of hot gas. They learn that our sun is a star at the center of our planetary system. Students learn about predictable patterns on Earth in relation to its place in the solar system. They design an exhibit that educates others about a concept that they have learned throughout the module.
Earth's Water and Interconnected Systems
Students learn about Earth's systems: the atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, and biosphere. Students examine how these systems interact and examine the role of gravity within each system. They take an in-depth look at how the processes of the water cycle intersect with each of the systems and apply this knowledge to investigate factors that impact the rate of evaporation. Students use the design process to develop a method for producing clean drinking water from samples of contaminated water.