SCIENCE AS INQUIRY

Develop students' abilities to do and understand scientific inquiry.

• Design and conduct scientific
  investigations.
  
• 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.
  
• 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; and mathematics and technology are important scientific tools.
  
• Understand that scientific
  explanations emphasize evidence.

CONTENT: LIFE SCIENCE

Develop students' understanding of populations and ecosystems.

• A population consists of all
  individuals of a species that occur together at a given place and time. All populations living together and the physical factors with which they interact compose an ecosystem.
  
• Populations of organisms can be categorized by the function they serve in an ecosystem. Plants and some microorganisms are
  producers—they make their own food. All animals, including humans, are consumers, which obtain food by eating other organisms. Decomposers, primarily bacteria and fungi, are consumers that use waste materials and dead organisms for food. Food webs identify the relationships among producers, consumers, and decomposers in an ecosystem.
  
• For ecosystems, the major source of energy is sunlight. Producers use photosynthesis to transform energy entering ecosystems as sunlight into chemical energy. That energy then passes from organism to organism in food webs.
  
• The number of organisms an
  ecosystem can support depends on the resources available and abiotic factors, such as quantity of light and water, range of temperatures, and soil composition. Given adequate biotic and abiotic resources and no disease or predators, populations (including humans) increase at rapid rates. Lack of resources and other factors, such as predation and climate, limit the growth of populations in specific niches in the ecosystems.

Develop students' understanding of reproduction and heredity.

• Reproduction is a characteristic of all systems; because no individual organism lives forever, reproduction is essential to the continuation of every species. Some organisms reproduce asexually. Other organisms reproduce sexually.
  
• Every organism needs a set of
  instructions for specifying its traits. Heredity is the passage of these instructions from one generation to another.
  
• Hereditary information is contained in genes, located in the chromosomes of each cell. Each gene carries a single unit of information. An inherited trait of an individual can be determined by one or by many genes, and a single gene can influence more than one trait.
  
• The characteristics of an organism can be described in terms of a combination of traits. Some traits are inherited, and others result from interactions with the environment.

Develop students' understanding of diversity and adaptations of organisms.

• Biological evolution accounts for the diversity of species developed through gradual processes over many generations. Species acquire many of their unique characteristics through biological adaptation, which involves the selection of naturally occurring variation in populations. Biological adaptations include changes in structures, behaviors, and physiology that enhance survival and reproductive success in a particular environment.

SCIENCE IN SOCIAL PERSPECTIVES

Develop students' understanding of changes in environments.

• Environments are the space,
  conditions, and factors that affect an individual's and a population's ability to survive and quality of life.
  
• Changes in environments can be natural or influenced by humans. Some changes are good, some are bad, and some are neither good nor bad.