Dynamic Curriculum

Grade 3 : Inquiry

Conceptual Strand Understandings about scientific inquiry and the ability to conduct inquiry are essential for living in the 21st century.

Guiding Question What tools, skills, knowledge, and dispositions are needed to conduct scientific inquiry?

Grade Level Expectations

GLE 0307.Inq.1 Explore different scientific phenomena by asking questions, making logical predictions, planning investigations, and recording data.

GLE 0307.Inq.2 Select and use appropriate tools and simple equipment to conduct an investigation.

GLE 0307.Inq.3 Organize data into appropriate tables, graphs, drawings, or diagrams

GLE 0307.Inq.4 Identify and interpret simple patterns of evidence to communicate the findings of multiple investigations.

GLE 0307.Inq.5 Recognize that people may interpret the same results in different ways.

GLE 0307.Inq.6 Compare the results of an investigation with what scientists already accept about this question.

Checks for Understanding

0307.Inq.1 Identify specific investigations that could be used to answer a particular question and identify reasons for this choice. 0307.Inq.2 Identify tools needed to investigate specific questions.

How Stuff Works

0307.Inq.3 Maintain a science notebook that includes observations, data, diagrams, and explanations

0307.Inq.4 Analyze and communicate findings from multiple investigations of similar phenomena to reach a conclusion.

State Performance Indicators

SPI 0307.Inq.1 Select an investigation that could be used to answer a specific question.

Grade 3 : Technology & Engineering

Grade Level Expectations

GLE 0307.T/E.1 Describe how tools, technology, and inventions help to answer questions and solve problems.

Leonardo's Mysterious Machines

GLE 0307.T/E.2 Recognize that new tools, technology, and inventions are always being developed.

Test your Engineering Skills

GLE 0307.T/E.3 Identify appropriate materials, tools, and machines that can extend or enhance the ability to solve a specified problem.

Invention Playhouse

GLE 0307.T/E.4 Recognize the connection between scientific advances, new knowledge, and the availability of new tools and technologies

GLE 0307.T/E.5 Apply a creative design strategy to solve a particular problem generated by societal needs and wants.

Break It Down Interactive

Checks for Understanding

0307.T/E.1 Explain how different inventions and technologies impact people and other living organisms.

Science and Technology includes Invention timelines for the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries and much more.

A Sightseer’s Guide to Engineering

Inventions (grade 3) pre-assessment, KWL, test, answers, matching worksheet, wkst answers

0307.T/E.2 Design a tool or a process that addresses an identified problem caused by human activity

Buoyant Boats

	0307.T/E.3 Determine criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of a solution to a specified problem.
	0307.T/E.4 Evaluate an invention that solves a problem and determine ways to improve the design.

Out with the Old and In with the New an invention unit for Grade 3

Systems, Up, Up and Away!

State Performance Indicators

SPI 0307.T/E.1 Select a tool, technology, or invention that was used to solve a human problem

Wheelchairs - Podcast

Inventions (grade 3) pre-assessment, KWL, test, answers, matching worksheet, wkst answers

SPI 0307.T/E.2 Recognize the connection between a scientific advance and the development of a new tool or technology.

The Science Toy Maker Home Page

Invention Game

Images of Science.

Grade 3 - Life Science

Grade 3 : Standard 1 -Cells

Conceptual Strand 1 All living things are made of cells that perform functions necessary for life.

Guiding Question 1 How are plant and animals cells organized to carry on the processes of life?

Grade Level Expectations

GLE 0307.1.1 Use magnifiers to make observations of specific plant and body parts and describe their functions.

Electron microscope

Cell Structure

Checks for Understanding

0307.1.1 Use a magnifier to investigate and describe the function of root hairs, stem cross sections, and leaf veins.

Virtual Cell

Plant Cells

The Cell Design and Function

SPI 0307.1.1 Identify specific parts of a plant and describe their function.

Conceptual Strand 2 All life is interdependent and interacts with the environment.

Guiding Question 2 How do living things interact with one another and with the non-living elements of their environment?

GLE 0307.2.2 Explain how organisms with similar needs compete with one another for resources.

SPI 0307.2.2 Determine how plants and animals compete for resources such as food, space, water, air, and shelter.

Guiding Question 3 What scientific information explains how matter and energy flow through the biosphere?

GLE 0307.3.1 Describe how animals use food to obtain energy and materials for growth and repair.

.SPI 0307.3.2 Recognize that animals obtain their food by eating plants and other animals.

Conceptual Strand 4 Plants and animals reproduce and transmit hereditary information between generations.

Guiding Question 4 What are the principal mechanisms by which living things reproduce and transmit information between parents and offspring?

GLE 0307.4.1 Identify the different life stages through which plants and animals pass

GLE 0307.4.2 Recognize common human characteristics that are transmitted from parents to offspring.

SPI 0307.4.1 Select an illustration that shows how an organism changes as it develops

SPI 0307.4.2 Distinguish between characteristics that are transmitted from parents to offspring and those that are not.

Conceptual Strand 5 A rich variety of complex organisms have developed in response to a continually changing environment.

Guiding Question 5 How does natural selection explain how organisms have changed over time?

GLE 0307.5.1 Explore the relationship between an organism’s characteristics and its ability to survive in a particular environment.

GLE 0307.5.2 Classify organisms as thriving, threatened, endangered, or extinct.

SPI 0307.5.1 Investigate an organism’s characteristics and evaluate how these features enable it to survive in a particular environment.

SPI 0307.5.2 Investigate populations of different organisms and classify them as thriving, threatened, endangered, or extinct.

Conceptual Strand 6 The cosmos is vast and explored well enough to know its basic structure and operational principles.

Guiding Question 6 What big ideas guide human understanding about the origin and structure of the universe, Earth’s place in the cosmos, and observable motions and patterns in the sky?

SPI 0307.6.1 Identify the major components of the solar system, i.e., sun, planets and moons.

Conceptual Strand 7 Major geologic events that occur over eons or brief moments in time continually shape and reshape the surface of the Earth, resulting in continuous global change.

Guiding Question 7 How is the earth affected by long-term and short term geological cycles and the influence of

GLE 0307.7.1 Use information and illustrations to identify the earth’s major landforms and water bodies.

GLE 0307.7.4 Design a simple investigation to demonstrate how earth materials can be conserved or recycled.

SPI 0307.7.1 Classify landforms and bodies of water according to their geological features and identify them on a map.

SPI 0307.7.2 Describe how rocks can be classified according to their physical characteristics.

Conceptual Strand 8 The earth is surrounded by an active atmosphere and an energy system that controls the distribution life, local weather, climate, and global temperature.

Guiding Question 8 How do the physical characteristics and the chemical makeup of the atmosphere influence surface processes and life on Earth?

GLE 0307.8.1 Recognize that that there are a variety of atmospheric conditions that can be measured.

GLE 0307.8.2 Use tools such as the barometer, thermometer, anemometer, and rain gauge to measure atmospheric conditions

GLE 0307.8.3 Identify cloud types associated with particular atmospheric conditions.

NASA - Observing Cloud Types This site has printable charts and a quiz plus is in French and Spanish

SPI 0307.8.1 Choose the correct tool for measuring a particular atmospheric condition.

Conceptual Strand 9 The composition and structure of matter is known, and it behaves according to principles that are generally understood.

Guiding Question 9 How does the structure of matter influence its physical and chemical behavior?

GLE 0307.9.1 Design a simple experiment to determine how the physical properties of matter can change over time and under different conditions.

Conceptual Strand 10 Various forms of energy are constantly being transformed into other types without any net loss of energy from the system.

Guiding Question 10 What basic energy related ideas are essential for understanding the dependency of the natural and man-made worlds on energy?

GLE 0307.10.2 Design and conduct an experiment to investigate the ability of different materials to conduct heat.

SPI 0307.10.1 Use an illustration to identify various sources of heat energy

SPI 0307.10.2 Classify materials according to their ability to conduct heat.

Conceptual Strand 11 Objects move in ways that can be observed, described, predicted, and measured.

Guiding Question 11 What causes objects to move differently under different circumstances?

GLE 0307.11.1 Explore how the direction of a moving object is affected by unbalanced forces

GLE 0307.11.2 Recognize the relationship between the mass of an object and the force needed to move it.

GLE 0307.11.3 Investigate how the pitch and volume of a sound can be changed.

SPI 0307.11.1 Identify how the direction of a moving object is changed by an applied force.

SPI 0307.11.4 Identify how sounds with different pitch and volume are produced.

Conceptual Strand 12 Everything in the universe exerts a gravitational force on everything else; there is an interplay between magnetic fields and electrical currents.

Guiding Question 12 What are the scientific principles that explain gravity and electromagnetism?