Notes:

  • The science standards apply to students in grade 3.
  • Performance expectations marked with an asterisk (*) integrate traditional science content with engineering through a Practice or Disciplinary Core Idea.
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3-PS2 Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

3-PS2-1. Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence of the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object. 

3-PS2-2. Make observations and/or measurements of an object’s motion to provide evidence that a pattern can be used to predict future motion. 

3-PS2-3. Ask questions to determine cause and effect relationships of electric or magnetic interactions between two objects not in contact with each other. 

3-PS2-4. Define a simple design problem that can be solved by applying scientific ideas about magnets.*

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3-LS1 From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

3-LS1-1. Develop models to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycles but all have in common birth, growth, reproduction, and death.

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3-LS2 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

3-LS2-1. Construct an argument that some animals form groups that help members survive.

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3-LS3 Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

3-LS3-1. Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence that plants and animals have traits inherited from parents and that variation of these traits exists in a group of similar organisms. 

3-LS3-2. Use evidence to support the explanation that traits can be influenced by the environment.

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3-LS4 Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

3-LS4-1. Analyze and interpret data from fossils to provide evidence of the organisms and the environments in which they lived long ago. 

3-LS4-2. Use evidence to construct an explanation for how the variations in characteristics among individuals of the same species may provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing. 

3-LS4-3. Construct an argument with evidence that in a particular habitat some organisms can survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all. 

3-LS4-4. Make a claim about the merit of a solution to a problem caused when the environment changes and the types of plants and animals that live there may change.*

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3-ESS2 Earth’s Systems

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

3-ESS2-1. Represent data in tables and graphical displays to describe typical weather conditions expected during a particular season. 

3-ESS2-2. Obtain and combine information to describe climates in different regions of the world.

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3-ESS3 Earth and Human Activity

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

3-ESS3-1. Make a claim about the merit of a design solution that reduces the impacts of a weather-related hazard.*

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3-5-ETS1 Engineering Design

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

3-5-ETS1-1. Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost. 

3-5-ETS1-2. 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. 

3-5-ETS1-3. 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.

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