Science
FIFTH GRADE Science 2018-2019 Academic Year
Fifth grade science curriculum this year will follow the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). These standards are more rigorous and require deeper
understanding, knowledge, and mastery of each skill.
While working through these standards your child will follow the eight science practices.
Topics to be covered this year:
Structure and Properties of Matter
Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems
Earth's Systems
Space Systems: Stars and the Solar System
Engineering Design
Fifth grade science curriculum this year will follow the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). These standards are more rigorous and require deeper
understanding, knowledge, and mastery of each skill.
While working through these standards your child will follow the eight science practices.
- Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering).
- Developing and using models.
- Planning and carrying out investigations.
- Analyzing and interpreting data.
- Using mathematics, information and computer technology, and computational thinking.
- Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering).
- Engaging in argument from evidence.
- Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information.
Topics to be covered this year:
Structure and Properties of Matter
- Develop a model that matter is made of particles too small to be seen.
- Measure and graph quantities to provide evidence that regardless of the type of change that occurs when heating, cooling, or mixing substances, the total weight of matter is conserved.
- Make observations and measurements to identify materials based on their properties.
- Conduct an investigation to determine whether the mixing of two or more substances results in new substances.
Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems
- Use models to describe that energy in animals' food (used for body repair, growth, motion, and to maintain body warmth) was once energy from the sun.
- Support an argument that plants get the materials they need for growth chiefly from air and water,
- Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment.
Earth's Systems
- Develop a model using an example to describe ways the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and/or atmosphere interact.
- Describe and graph the amounts and percentages of water and fresh water in various reservoirs to provide evidence about the distribution of water on Earth.
- Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth's resources and environment.
Space Systems: Stars and the Solar System
- Support and argument that the gravitational force exerted by Earth on objects is directed down.
- Support and argument that the apparent brightness of the sun and stars is due to their relative distances from Earth.
- Represent data in graphical displays to reveal patterns of daily changes in length and direction of shadows, day and night, and the seasonal appearance of some stars in the night sky.
Engineering Design
- Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
- Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
- Plan and carry out fair tests in which variables are controlled and failure points are considered to identify aspects of a model or prototype that can be improved.