School Improvement in Maryland

VSC: Science Grade 1

January 2008
PK-3 Acrobat 114k Ms Word 275k
3-8 Acrobat 202k Ms Word 445k
View Glossary - Highlighted Assessment Limits

Standard 1.0 Skills and Processes

Topic

A. Constructing Knowledge

Indicator

  • 1. Raise questions about the world around them and be willing to seek answers to some of them by making careful observations and trying things out.

Objectives

  1. Describe what can be learned about things by just observing those things carefully and adding information by sometimes doing something to the things and noting what happens.
  1. Seek information through reading, observation, exploration, and investigations.
  1. Use tools such as thermometers, magnifiers, rulers, or balances to extend their senses and gather data.
  1. Explain that when a science investigation is done the way it was done before, we expect to get a very similar result.
  1. Participate in multiple experiences to verify that science investigations generally work the same way in different places.
  1. Suggest things that you could do to find answers to questions raised by observing objects and/or phenomena (events such as, water disappearing from the classroom aquarium or a pet's water bowl).
  1. Use whole numbers and simple, everyday fractions in ordering, counting, identifying, measuring, and describing things and experiences.

Topic

B. Applying Evidence and Reasoning

Indicator

  • 1. People are more likely to believe your ideas if you can give good reasons for them.

Objectives

  1. Provide reasons for accepting or rejecting ideas examined.
  1. Develop reasonable explanations for observations made, investigations completed, and information gained by sharing ideas and listening to others' ideas.
  1. Explain why it is important to make some fresh observations when people give different descriptions of the same thing.

Topic

C. Communicating Scientific Information

Indicator

  • 1. Ask, "How do you know?" in appropriate situations and attempt reasonable answers when others ask them the same question.

Objectives

  1. Describe things as accurately as possible and compare observations with those of others.
  1. Describe and compare things in terms of number, shape, texture, size, weight, color, and motion.
  1. Draw pictures that correctly portray at least some features of the thing being described and sequence events (seasons, seed growth).
  1. Have opportunities to work with a team, share findings with others, and recognize that all team members should reach their own conclusions about what the findings mean.
  1. Recognize that everybody can do science and invent things and ideas.

Topic

D. Technology

Indicator

  • 1. Design and make things with simple tools and a variety of materials.

Objectives

  1. Make something out of paper, cardboard, wood, plastic, metal, or existing objects that can actually be used to perform a task.
  1. Recognize that tools are used to do things better or more easily and to do some things that could not otherwise be done at all.
  1. Assemble, describe, take apart and reassemble constructions using interlocking blocks, erector sets and the like.
  1. Recognize that some kinds of materials are better than others for making any particular thing, for example, materials that are better in some ways (such as stronger and cheaper) may be worse in other ways (such as heavier and harder to cut).
  1. Explain that sometimes it is not possible to make or do everything that is designed.

Indicator

  • 2. Practice identifying the parts of things and how one part connects to and affects another.

Objectives

  1. Investigate a variety of objects to identify that most things are made of parts
  1. Explain that something may not work if some of its parts are missing.
  1. Explain that when parts are put together, they can do things that they couldn't do by themselves.

Indicator

  • 3. Examine a variety of physical models and describe what they teach about the real things they are meant to resemble.

Objectives

  1. Explain that a model of something is different from the real thing but can be used to learn something about the real thing.
  1. Realize that one way to describe something is to say how it is like something else.

Standard 2.0 Earth/Space Science

Topic

D. Astronomy

Indicator

  • 2. Recognize that there is a relationship between the sun and the earth.

Objectives

  1. Identify ways that the sun affects the earth including that the sun warms the earth and provides light.

Topic

E. Interactions of Hydrosphere and Atmosphere

Indicator

  • 1. Describe observable changes in water on the surface of the Earth.

Objectives

  1. Cite examples of the sun's effect on what happens to water on the Earth's surface.
    • Water disappears from puddles, wet surfaces after rain, any open container, etc.
    • Water can be a liquid or a solid and go back and forth from one form to another

Indicator

  • 2. Describe that some events in nature have repeating patterns.

Objectives

  1. Observe and compare day-to-day weather changes.
  1. Observe, record, and compare weather changes from month to month.
  1. Compare temperatures and type and amount of precipitation across the months.
  1. Identify the impact of weather changes on daily activities.
  1. Identify and describe patterns of weather conditions based on data collected.

Standard 3.0 Life Science

Topic

A. Diversity of Life

Indicator

  • 1. Compare and explain how external features of plants and animals help them survive in different environments.

Objectives

  1. Use the senses and magnifying instruments to examine a variety of plants and animals to describe external features and what they do.
  1. Compare similar features in some animals and plants and explain how each of these enables the organism to satisfy basic needs.
  1. Use the information collected to ask and compare answers to questions about how an organism's external features contribute to its ability to survive in an environment.
  1. Classify organisms according to one selected feature, such as body covering, and identify other similarities shared by organisms within each group formed.

Topic

B. Cells

Indicator

  • 1. Describe evidence from investigations that living things are made of parts too small to be seen with the unaided eye.

Objectives

  1. Use magnifying instruments to observe parts of a variety of living things, such as leaves, seeds, insects, worms, etc. to describe (drawing or text) parts seen with the magnifier.
  1. Use information gathered from observations to compare the descriptions (drawings or text) of the different parts seen.
  1. Describe some of the ideas or questions that might result from examining organisms more closely.

Indicator

  • 2. Provide evidence that all organisms are made of parts that help them carry out the basic functions of life.

Objectives

  1. Gather information and direct evidence that humans and other animals have different body parts used to seek, find, and take in food.
  1. Investigate and identify parts of the body that alert humans and other animals to danger and help them to fight, hide or get out of danger.
  1. Describe some parts of plants and describe what they do for the plant.
  1. Respond, giving reasons to support the response, to the statement "All living things are made of parts."

Topic

C. Genetics

Indicator

  • 1. Explain that there are differences among individuals in any population.

Objectives

  1. Examine a variety of populations of plants and animals (including humans), to identify ways that individual members of that population are different from one another.
  1. Make a list of possible advantages and disadvantages of differences of individuals in a population of organisms.

Indicator

  • 2. Recognize that all living things have offspring, usually with two parents involved.

Objectives

  1. Examine a variety of living things and their offspring and describe what each parent and offspring looks like.
  1. Identify similarities and differences among the offspring and between the offspring and each parent.
  1. Based on observations, construct an appropriate response to the question "Are parents and offspring more similar than they are different?"

Topic

E. Flow of Matter and Energy

Indicator

  • 1. Describe some of the ways in which animals depend on plants and on each other.

Objectives

  1. Examine organisms in a wide variety of environments to gather information on how animals satisfy their need for food.
    • Some animals eat only plants
    • Some animals eat only other animals
    • Some animals eat both plants and other animals

Standard 5.0 Physics

Topic

C. Electricity and Magnetism

Indicator

  • 3. Describe the effect magnets have on a variety of objects.

Objectives

  1. Classify materials based on their behavior in the presence of a magnet.
  1. Describe how the magnet affects the behavior of objects within each group.

Standard 6.0 Environmental Science

Topic

B. Environmental Issues

Indicator

  • 1. Recognize that caring about the environment is an important human activity.

Objectives

  1. Recognize and describe that individual and group actions, such as recycling, help the environment.
  1. Recognize and describe that individual and group actions, such as littering, harm the environment.
  1. Give reasons why people should take care of their environments.

January 2008