Science - 3rd Grade

Avon Lake Curriculum Framework

SCIENCE  •  GRADE 3

 

Content Overview: 

Students analyze evidence about organisms and environments, investigate forces and motion, interpret weather and climate data, and model life cycles and traits. 3-5-ETS1-1 through 3-5-ETS1-3 are integrated through design problems, comparison of solutions, and fair testing.

 

Resources:

TCI Bring Science Alive! Exploring Science Practices 

 

Assessments: 

TCI Unit Checkpoints and Performance Assessments; investigation notebooks; data tables/graphs; evidence-based explanations and arguments; engineering design tasks; NGSS-designed unit tests.

 

Standards/Learning Goals 

Unit 1 Environments and Living Things

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

  • 3-LS4-1 — Analyze fossil data for evidence about organisms and environments that existed long ago.

  • 3-LS4-3 / 3-LS4-4 — Use evidence to explain how habitat conditions affect survival and evaluate solutions when environmental change affects living things.

Unit 2  Forces and Motion

  • 3-PS2-1 — Investigate effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on motion.

  • 3-PS2-2 — Use observations/measurements of motion patterns to predict future motion.

  • 3-PS2-3 / 3-PS2-4 — Investigate electric/magnetic interactions at a distance and define a design problem that applies ideas about magnets.

Unit 3 Weather and Climate

  • 3-ESS2-1 — Represent weather data in tables and graphs to describe typical seasonal conditions.

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

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

Unit 4 Life Cycles and Traits

  • 3-LS1-1 — Develop models showing common patterns across diverse plant and animal life cycles.

  • 3-LS3-1 / 3-LS3-2 — Analyze inherited traits and variation, and explain how the environment can influence traits.

  • 3-LS4-2 — Use evidence to explain how some variations can provide survival and reproductive advantages.