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How to learn Grade 6: Science

District of Columbia academic standards: Science, Grade 6

0 of 41 concepts ready to learn · Markdown, for your AI

1. Engineering Design

  1. Building an energy-converting device: Apply scientific ideas to design, test, and refine a device that converts energy from one form to another
  2. Simple Design Problems: Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost
  3. Comparing Possible Solutions: Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints

2. Earth and Human Activity

  1. Communities Protecting Resources: Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth's resources and environment
  2. Natural Disaster Solutions: Generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impacts of natural Earth processes on humans, such as earthquakes, floods, or volcanic eruptions

3. Earth's Systems

  1. Sun-Driven Weather Systems: Understand how the Sun drives weather: the Sun heats Earth's surface unevenly (land heats faster than water, equator gets more heat than poles), creating differences in air pressure that cause wind patterns, ocean currents, and large-scale weather systems
  2. Earth's atmosphere: Develop a model to describe ways the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere interact as connected Earth systems
  3. The Water Cycle: Describe the water cycle, tracing water through evaporation, condensation, precipitation, surface runoff, and transpiration in plants, explaining how the sun drives the cycle
  4. How fossils form: Identify evidence from patterns in rock formations and fossils in rock layers to support an explanation for changes in a landscape over time

4. Earth's Place in the Universe

  1. Scale of the Solar System: Use scale models, diagrams, or calculations to represent the relative sizes and distances of objects in the solar system, understanding that the distances between planets are enormously larger than the planets themselves
  2. Universal Gravitation: Describe gravity as a universal attractive force between all masses, explain that orbital motion arises because gravity provides the centripetal force keeping objects in orbit, and compare gravitational field strengths on different planets
  3. Phases of the Moon: Explain the phases of the Moon as the changing angle of sunlight on the lunar surface as seen from Earth, and describe how solar and lunar eclipses occur

5. Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity

  1. Evolution vocabulary: Use technical vocabulary for evolution and natural selection — adaptation, evolution, natural selection, extinct, extinction, fossil record, species, common ancestor, mutation, variation — and explain the mechanism of natural selection using these terms in the correct sequence
  2. Genetic Mutation: Explain genetic mutation as a random change in DNA sequence, describe causes of mutation (e.g. radiation, chemicals, copying errors), and explain that most mutations are neutral, some harmful, and a few beneficial
  3. Variation & Survival Advantage: Use evidence to explain how variations in characteristics among individuals of the same species may provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing
  4. Fossils as Evidence: Analyse and interpret data from fossils to provide evidence of organisms and environments that existed long ago
  5. Life Changed Over Time: Recognise that living things have changed over time and that fossils provide information about organisms that inhabited the Earth millions of years ago

6. Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits

  1. Variation in Species: Explain variation within and between species, distinguishing between continuous variation (e.g. height) and discontinuous variation (e.g. blood group), and between genetic and environmental causes

7. Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics

  1. Food Webs & Interdependence: Construct and interpret food webs showing the interdependence of organisms in an ecosystem, explaining how a change in one population affects others
  2. Biodiversity & Resilience: Explain what biodiversity means, why high biodiversity makes ecosystems more resilient, and describe the ways human activity threatens biodiversity (habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species, climate change)
  3. Ocean Ecosystems: Understand ocean ecosystems as interconnected systems where living things (producers, consumers, decomposers) and non-living factors (temperature, salinity, light, currents) all interact, and that changes to one part affect the whole system
  4. Matter Cycling in Ecosystems: Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment in an ecosystem

8. From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes

  1. Senses, Brain & Responses: Use a model to describe that animals receive information through their senses, process it in their brain, and respond in different ways
  2. Energy from Food & the Sun: Use models to describe that energy in animals' food was once energy from the sun, transferred through plants or other organisms
  3. Photosynthesis: Explain photosynthesis as the process by which plants use light energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into glucose and oxygen, and describe how mineral nutrients are absorbed through roots
  4. How animals adapt to environments: Identify how animals and plants are adapted to suit their environment and understand that adaptation may lead to evolution over time
  5. Evidence-Based Classification: Give reasons for classifying plants and animals based on specific characteristics, using evidence to justify classification decisions
  6. Cells to Organ Systems: Describe the hierarchical organisation of multicellular organisms: cells → tissues → organs → organ systems → organism
  7. Cells Under the Microscope: Understand that all living organisms are made of cells and use a light microscope to observe, interpret, and record cell structure

9. Waves and Their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer

  1. Wave Properties & Types: Describe waves in terms of amplitude, wavelength, frequency, and wave speed; distinguish transverse waves (oscillation perpendicular to direction of travel) from longitudinal waves (oscillation parallel); and use the wave equation v = fλ
  2. Waves & Different Materials: Explain how waves can be absorbed, transmitted, or reflected by different materials, and apply these interactions to explain colour perception, sight, communication technologies, and the effects of different surfaces on wave behaviour

10. Energy

  1. Speed and energy: Use evidence to construct an explanation relating the speed of an object to the energy of that object
  2. Energy stores and transfers: Identify the main energy stores (kinetic, gravitational potential, elastic potential, thermal, chemical, nuclear, electromagnetic) and the pathways by which energy is transferred between stores (mechanically, electrically, by heating, by radiation)

11. Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions

  1. Balanced & Unbalanced Forces: Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence of the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object
  2. Electromagnets: Describe the magnetic effect of an electric current (a current-carrying wire produces a magnetic field), and investigate how the strength of an electromagnet depends on current, number of coil turns, and core material
  3. Relative Motion: Explain relative motion — how the apparent speed and direction of an object depends on the observer's own motion — using everyday examples such as trains and cars passing
  4. Newton's Third Law: State and apply Newton's Third Law: every force has an equal and opposite reaction force acting on a different object, distinguishing action-reaction pairs from balanced forces

12. Matter and Its Interactions

  1. Conservation of Mass: Measure and provide evidence that the total weight of matter is conserved regardless of the type of change (heating, cooling, or mixing)
  2. How Materials Change State: Explain melting, freezing, boiling, condensing, and sublimation using the particle model, interpreting heating and cooling curves to identify melting and boiling points
  3. What happens when things collide: Ask questions and predict outcomes about the changes in energy that occur when objects collide
  4. Atoms, Elements & Compounds: Explain the differences between atoms, elements, and compounds; describe the simple Bohr model of the atom (nucleus with protons and neutrons, electrons in shells); and write and interpret chemical symbols and simple formulae