Describe how design, as a creative planning process, leads to useful products and systems.

Describe how troubleshooting as a problem-solving method may identify the cause of a malfunction in a technological system.

Describe the relationships between biotic and abiotic components of an ecosystem.

• Compare and contrast different biomes and their characteristics
• Describe symbiotic and predator/prey relationships

Explain the flow of energy within an ecosystem.

•  Compare and contrast the flow of energy between organisms in different habitats.
•  Explain the concept of trophic levels.

PATTERNS

Compare and contrast observable patterns in the physical characteristics across families, strains and species.

• Understand how theories are developed.
• Identify questions that can be answered through scientific investigations and evaluate the appropriateness of questions.
• Design and conduct a scientific investigation and understand that current scientific knowledge guides scientific investigations.
• Describe relationships using inference and prediction.
• Use appropriate tools and technologies to gather, analyze, and interpret data and understand that it enhances accuracy and allows scientists to analyze and quantify results of investigations.
• Develop descriptions, explanations, and models using evidence and understand that these emphasize evidence, have logically consistent arguments, and are based on scientific principles, models, and theories.
• Analyze alternative explanations and understanding that science advances through legitimate skepticism.
• Use mathematics in all aspects of scientific inquiry.
• Understand that scientific investigations may result in new ideas for study, new methods, or procedures for an investigation or new technologies to improve data collection.

Describe the similarities and differences of physical characteristics in diverse organisms.

Explain why the life cycles of different organisms have varied lengths.

Compare life processes (e.g. growth, digestion) at the organism level with life processes at the cellular level.

MODELS

Apply the appropriate models to show interactions among organisms in an environment.

• Understand how theories are developed.
• Identify questions that can be answered through scientific investigations and evaluate the appropriateness of questions.
• Design and conduct a scientific investigation and understand that current scientific knowledge guides scientific investigations.
• Describe relationships using inference and prediction.
• Use appropriate tools and technologies to gather, analyze, and interpret data and understand that it enhances accuracy and allows scientists to analyze and quantify results of investigations.
• Develop descriptions, explanations, and models using evidence and understand that these emphasize evidence, have logically consistent arguments, and are based on scientific principles, models, and theories.
• Analyze alternative explanations and understanding that science advances through legitimate skepticism.
• Use mathematics in all aspects of scientific inquiry.
• Understand that scientific investigations may result in new ideas for study, new methods, or procedures for an investigation or new technologies to improve data collection.

Explain how genetic instructions influence inherited traits.

Identify Mendelian patterns of inheritance.

Compare sexual reproduction with asexual reproduction.

Describe how selective breeding and biotechnology can alter the genetic composition of organisms.

Describe how unbalanced forces acting on an object change its velocity.

Analyze how observations of displacement, velocity, and acceleration provide necessary and sufficient evidence for the existence of forces.

Describe how energy can be changed from one form to another (transformed) as it moves through a system or transferred from one system to another system.

Differentiate among convection, conduction, and radiation.

Explain why heat energy consists of the random motion and vibrations of the particles of matter.

Explain how electrical current is produced by the flow of electrons.

Explain and demonstrate how electric current produces magnetic forces and how moving magnets produce electric current.

Demonstrate that visible light is a mixture of many different colors.

Explain the construct of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Describe how sound and light energy are transmitted by waves.

ENERGY

Demonstrate that heat is often produced as energy is transformed through a system.

ENERGY

Demonstrate how the transfer of heat energy causes temperature changes.

• Understand how theories are developed.
• Identify questions that can be answered through scientific investigations and evaluate the appropriateness of questions.
• Design and conduct a scientific investigation and understand that current scientific knowledge guides scientific investigations.
• Describe relationships using inference and prediction.
• Use appropriate tools and technologies to gather, analyze, and interpret data and understand that it enhances accuracy and allows scientists to analyze and quantify results of investigations.
• Develop descriptions, explanations, and models using evidence and understand that these emphasize evidence, have logically consistent arguments, and are based on scientific principles, models, and theories.
• Analyze alternative explanations and understanding that science advances through legitimate skepticism.
• Use mathematics in all aspects of scientific inquiry.
• Understand that scientific investigations may result in new ideas for study, new methods, or procedures for an investigation or new technologies to improve data collection.