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Students know:

Human activities in agriculture, industry, and everyday life can have major effects, both positive and negative, on the land, vegetation, streams, ocean, air, and even outer space.
Individuals and communities are doing things to help protect Earth's resources and environments.
Research on a problem should be carried out before beginning to design a solution.
Testing a solution involves investigating how well it performs under a range of likely conditions.
At whatever stage, communicating with peers about proposed solutions is an important part of the design process, and shared ideas can lead to improved designs.

Students are able to:

Use grade-appropriate information from research about a given problem, including the causes and effects of the problem and relevant scientific information.
Generate at least two possible solutions to the problem based on scientific information and understanding of the problem.
Specify how each design solution solves the problem.
Share ideas and findings with others about design solutions to generate a variety of possible solutions.
Describe the necessary steps for designing a solution to a problem, including conducting research and communicating with others throughout the design process to improve the design [note: emphasis is on what is necessary for designing solutions, not on a step-wise process].

Students understand that:

Engineers improve existing technologies or develop new ones to: increase benefits, decrease known risks, and/or meet societal demands.

Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions

Systems and System Models