SCIENCE AS INQUIRY

Develop students’ abilities to do and understand scientific inquiry.

• Identify questions that can be answered through scientific investigations.
  
• Design and conduct a scientific investigation.
  
• Use appropriate tools and techniques to gather, analyze, and interpret data.
  
• Develop descriptions, explanations, predictions, and models using evidence.
  
• Think critically and logically to make the connections between evidence and explanations.
  
• Recognize and analyze alternative explanations and predictions.
  
• Communicate scientific procedures and explanations.
  
• Use mathematics in scientific inquiry.
  
• Understand that different kinds of questions suggest different kinds of scientific investigations; current knowledge guides scientific investigations; mathematics and technology are important scientific tools.
  
• Understand that scientific explanations emphasize evidence.

CONTENT: LIFE SCIENCE

Develop students’ understanding of structure and function in living systems.

• Living systems at all levels of organization demonstrate the complementary nature of structure and function.
  
• Specialized cells perform specialized functions in multicellular organisms. Each type of cell, tissue, and organ has a distinct structure and a set of functions that serve the organism as a whole.
  
• Disease is a breakdown in structures or functions of an organism.

Develop students’ understanding of transfer of energy.

• Light interacts with matter by transmission, absorption, or scattering. To see an object, the eye must gather light emitted by or scattered from that object.

SCIENCE IN PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES

Develop students’ understanding of personal health.

• Safe living involves the development and use of safety precautions and the recognition of risk in decisions.