The DRAFT Middle School Progression – Next Gen Science Partners

Middle School Streamlined Science Curriculum

In considering a proposal for a middle school streamlined science curriculum progression for TCSD the unique characteristics of the Jackson Hole community as well as the needs of TCSD teachers and administrators were taken into account. Four main criteria were utilized in the following order of importance:

Focus on a classroom-based approach
Logical transitions between scientific disciplines and their associated WyCPS
Elements of place-based education and phenological opportunities
Availability of instructors from partner organizations

Firstly, a focus on classroom-based learning was used because of the relative ease of implementation in most cases, the higher cost in both money and time involved with busing students to different locations, and the relative ease of representatives from partner organizations to visit the classrooms.

Secondly, logical transitions between some scientific disciplines and the associated WyCPS for each grade level were identified and used as a basic structure for the progression whenever possible during one year and between years.

Next, whenever feasible and when deemed necessary to achieve the optimal result from the lessons, elements of place-based education and phenological opportunities were proposed. Those later decisions follow a 40-year legacy in Jackson Hole begun by Jackson Hole High School science teacher Ted Major who began taking his students outside to learn geology, biology, life science, and ecology. To ignore the incredible potential of bringing students inside Grand Teton National Park, the surrounding National Forests, and Wildlife Refuges would be a huge missed learning opportunity. Moreover, we took into account the key times of year when teaching lessons outside would increase their relevance.

Some small deviations from the “best fit” progression using the first three criteria were necessary to take into account the availability of instructors from partner organizations. Currently, programs are being offered in-person and virtually because of COVID-19.

Partner Organizations

The 13 partner organizations identified as contributors to science lessons in TCSD K-5th grade classrooms included (in alphabetical order):

Programs

The 13 partner organizations implemented roughly 150 programs in TCSD K-5th grade classrooms during the 2018-2019 school year.

8 of those programs were for Kindergarten
10 of those programs were for 1st grade
32 of those programs were for 2nd grade
39 of those programs were for 3rd grade
26 of those programs were for 4th grade
34 of those programs were for 5th grade

Standards

The 2016 Wyoming Science Content and Performance Standards (WyCPS) include:

72 Science Standards for Kindergarten through 5th grade
6 multi-grade level Engineering, Technology, & Applications of Science (ETS) Standards:
- Three for K-2nd grade
- Three for 3rd-4th grade

Of the 78 total WyCPS, 75 (96%) are addressed to some extent in the current programming being offered by NGSP organizations. The 75 standards addressed included:

ALL 13 of the Kindergarten Science Standards
ALL nine 1st grade Science Standards
Nine of the 11 2nd grade Science Standards
ALL 18 3rd grade Science Standards and the 3rd-5th ETS Standard
ALL 14 4th grade Science Standards
ALL 13 of the 5th grade Science Standards;

How to use the following Progression:

The following is meant to be a resource and a tool for educators, administrators, nonprofits, government organizations, and the general public to help them explore how the current lessons and programs offered by partner organizations in Teton County Public K-5th Grade classrooms aligns with the Wyoming State Science Standards.

The Progression is organizaed in nested levels with grade as the upper level, followed by time of year, then by standard, and finally by partner organization. The standards, partner organizations, and their lessons are all hyperlinked so that intersted individuals can see the following:

Clicking on a hyperlinked standard will show all of the offered lessons that align with that standard.
Clciking on a hyperlinked partner organization name will show all of the lessons offered by that partner organization.
Clicking on a hyperlinked lesson name will show all of the standards that lesson addresses.

The Progression: 6th Grade

August-October

November-December

January-February

March-April

May-June

MS-ESS1-1 Earth’s Place in the Universe: Develop and use a model of the Earth-sun-moon system to describe the cyclic patterns of lunar phases, eclipses of the sun and moon, and seasons.

MS-ESS1-2 Earth’s Place in the Universe: Develop and use a model to describe the role of gravity in the motions within galaxies and the solar system.

MS-ESS1-3 Earth’s Place in the Universe: Analyze and interpret data to determine scale properties of objects in the solar system.

MS-ESS1-4 Earth’s Place in the Universe: Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence from rocks and rock strata for how the geologic time scale is used to organize Earth’s 4.6-billion-year-old history.

MS-ESS2-1 Earth’s System: Develop a model to describe the cycling of Earth’s materials and the flow of energy that drives this process.

MS-ESS2-2 Earth’s System: Construct an explanation based on evidence for how geoscience processes have changed Earth’s surface at varying time and spatial scales.

MS-ESS2-3 Earth’s System: Analyze and interpret data on the distribution of fossils and rocks, continental shapes, and seafloor structures toprovide evidence of the past plate motions.

MS-ESS2-4 Earth’s System: Develop a model to describe the cycling of water through Earth’s systems driven by energy from the sun and the force of gravity.

MS-ESS2-5 Earth’s System: Collect data to provide evidence for how the motions and complex interactions of air masses results in changes in weather conditions.

MS-ESS2-6 Earth’s System: Develop and use a model to describe how unequal heating and rotation of the Earth cause patterns of atmospheric and oceanic circulation that determine regional climates.

MS-ESS3-1 Earth and Human Activity: Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how the uneven distributions of Earth’s mineral, energy and groundwater resources are the result of past and current geoscience processes.

MS-ESS3-2 Earth and Human Activity: Analyze and interpret data on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and inform the development of technologies to mitigate their effects.

MS-ESS3-3 Earth and Human Activity: Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring, evaluating, and managing a human impact on the environment.

MS-ESS3-4 Earth and Human Activity: Construct an argument supported by evidence for how changes in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth’s systems.

MS-ESS3-5 Earth and Human Activity: Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused changes in global temperatures over time.

MS-ETS1-1 Engineering, Technology, and Applications of Science: Define the criteria and constraints of a design problem with sufficient precision to ensure a successful solution, taking into account relevant scientific principles and potential impacts on people and the natural environment that may limit possible solutions.

MS-ETS1-2 Engineering, Technology, and Applications of Science: Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.

MS-ETS1-3 Engineering, Technology, and Applications of Science: Analyze data from tests to determine similarities and differences among several design solutions to identify the best characteristics of each that can be combined into a new solution to better meet the criteria for success.

MS-ETS1-4 Engineering, Technology, and Applications of Science: Develop a model for a proposed object, tool or process and then use an iterative process to test the model, collect data, and generate modification ideas trending toward an optimal design.

MS-ETS2-1 Engineering, Technology, Science and Society: Ask questions about a common household appliance, collect data to reverse-engineer the appliance and learn how it’s design has evolved, describe how scientific discoveries, technological advances, and engineering design played significant roles in its development, and explore how science, engineering and technology might be used together or individually in producing improved versions of the appliance.

MS-ETS2-2 Engineering, Technology, Science and Society: Develop a model defining and prioritizing the impacts of human activity on a particular aspect of the environment, identifying positive and negative consequences of the activity, both short and long-term, and investigate and explain how the ethics and integrity of scientists and engineers and respect for individual property rights might constrain future development.

MS-LS1-1 From Molecules to Organisms: Structure and Processes: Conduct an investigation to provide evidence that living things are made of cells; either one cell or many different numbers and types of cells.

MS-LS1-2 From Molecules to Organisms: Structure and Processes: Develop and use models to describe the parts, functions, and basic processes of cells.

MS-LS1-3 From Molecules to Organisms: Structure and Processes: Use argument supported by evidence for how the body is a system of interacting subsystems composed of groups of cells.

MS-LS1-4 From Molecules to Organisms: Structure and Processes: Use argument based on empirical evidence and scientific reasoning to support an explanation for how characteristic animal behaviors and specialized plant structures affect the probability of successful reproduction of animals and plants respectively.

MS-LS1-5 From Molecules to Organisms: Structure and Processes: Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how environmental and genetic factors influence the growth of organisms.

MS-LS1-6 From Molecules to Organisms: Structure and Processes: Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for the role of photosynthesis in the cycling of matter and flow of energy into and out of organisms.

MS-LS1-7 From Molecules to Organisms: Structure and Processes: Develop a model to describe how food molecules (sugar) are rearranged through chemical reactions forming new molecules that support growth and/or release energy as this matter moves through an organism.

MS-LS1-8 From Molecules to Organisms: Structure and Processes: Gather and synthesize information that sensory receptors respond to stimuli by sending messages to the brain for immediate behavior or storage as memories.

MS-LS2-1 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics: Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.

MS-LS2-2 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics: Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems.

MS-LS2-3 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics: Develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem.

MS-LS2-4 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics: Construct an argument supported by empirical evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations.

MS-LS2-5 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics: Evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services.

MS-LS3-1 Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits: Develop and use a model to describe why structural changes to genes (mutations) located on chromosomes may affect proteins and may result in harmful, beneficial, or neutral effects to the structure and function of the organism.

MS-LS3-2 Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits: Develop and use a model to describe why asexual reproduction results in offspring with identical genetic information and sexual reproduction results in offspring with genetic variation.

MS-LS4-1 Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity: Analyze and interpret data for patterns in the fossil record that document the existence, diversity, extinction, and change of life forms throughout the history of life on Earth under the assumption that natural laws operate today as in the past.

MS-LS4-2 Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity: Apply scientific ideas to construct an explanation for the anatomical similarities and differences among modern organisms and between modern and fossil organisms to infer evolutionary relationships.

MS-LS4-4 Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity: Construct an explanation based on evidence that describes how genetic variations of traits in a population affects individuals’ probability of surviving and reproducing in a specific environment.

MS-LS4-5 Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity: Gather and synthesize information about the technologies that have changed the way humans influence the inheritance of desired traits in organisms.

MS-LS4-6 Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity: Use mathematical representations to support explanations of how natural selection may lead to increases and decreases of specific traits in populations over time.

MS-PS1-1 Matter and Its Interactions: Develop models to describe the atomic composition of simple molecules and extended structures.

MS-PS1-2 Matter and Its Interactions: Analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances before and after the substances interact to determine if a chemical reaction has occurred.

MS-PS1-3 Matter and Its Interactions: Gather and make sense of information to describe that synthetic materials come from natural resources and impact society.

MS-PS1-4 Matter and Its Interactions: Develop a model that predicts and describes changes in particle motion, temperature, and state of a pure substance when thermal energy is added or removed.

MS-PS1-5 Matter and Its Interactions: Develop and use a model to describe how the total number of atoms does not change in a chemical reaction and thus mass is conserved.

MS-PS1-6 Matter and Its Interactions: Undertake a design project to construct, test, and modify a device that either releases or absorbs thermal energy by chemical processes.

MS-PS2-1 Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions: Apply Newton’s third law to design a solution to a problem involving the motion of two colliding objects.

MS-PS2-2 Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions: Plan an investigation to provide evidence that the change in an object’s motion depends on the sum of the forces on the object and the mass of the object.

MS-PS2-3 Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions: Ask questions about data to determine the factors that affect the strength of electric and magnetic forces.

MS-PS2-4 Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions: Construct and present arguments using evidence to support the claim that gravitational interactions are attractive and depend on the masses of interacting objects.

MS-PS2-5 Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions: Conduct an investigation and evaluate the experimental design to provide evidence that fields exist between objects exerting forces on each other even though the objects are not in contact.

MS-PS3-1 Energy: Construct and interpret graphical displays of data to describe the relationships of kinetic energy to the mass of an object and to the speed of an object.

MS-PS3-2 Energy: Develop a model to describe that when the arrangement of objects interacting at a distance changes, different amounts of potential energy are stored in the system.

MS-PS3-3 Energy: Apply scientific principles to design, construct, and test a device that either minimizes or maximizes thermal energy transfer.

MS-PS3-4 Energy: Plan an investigation to determine the relationships among the energy transferred, the type of matter, the mass, and the change in the average kinetic energy of the particles as measured by the temperature of the sample.

MS-PS3-5 Energy: Construct, use, and present arguments to support the claim that when the kinetic energy of an object changes, energy is transferred to or from the object.

MS-PS4-1 Waves and their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer: Use mathematical representations to describe a simple model for waves, which includes how the amplitude of a wave is related to the energy in a wave.

MS-PS4-2 Waves and their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer: Develop and use a model to describe that waves are reflected, absorbed, or transmitted through various materials.

MS-PS4-3 Waves and their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer: Integrate qualitative scientific and technical information to support the claim that digitized signals are a more reliable way to encode and transmit information than analog signals.

The Progression: 7th Grade