Unpacked Content
Scientific and Engineering Practices
Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions
Crosscutting Concepts
Systems and System Models
Knowledge
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.
Skills
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].
Understanding
Students understand that:
- Engineers improve existing technologies or develop new ones to: increase benefits, decrease known risks, and/or meet societal demands.
Vocabulary
- Design
- Solution
- Test
- Revise
- Polluted
- Environment
- Engineer
- Technology
