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How to learn Grade 6: Science

Michigan academic standards: Science, Grade 6

0 of 45 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. Human Impacts

  1. Human impact on environments: Use vocabulary for human impact on the environment — pollution, habitat destruction, deforestation, biodiversity, conservation, renewable energy, non-renewable energy, fossil fuel, carbon footprint, sustainability, endangered, extinct — and apply these when discussing environmental issues and human choices
  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. Weather and Climate

  1. Climate Change Basics: Understand the basics of climate change: Earth’s atmosphere traps some of the Sun's heat (the greenhouse effect), burning fossil fuels adds extra greenhouse gases (especially CO₂), this is making Earth gradually warmer, and this warming changes weather patterns, melts ice, and raises sea levels
  2. 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
  3. Reading Weather Maps: Read and interpret weather maps, data tables, and graphs — identifying symbols for sun, rain, wind, and temperature; spotting trends and patterns in weather data over weeks, months, or seasons; and using data to make simple predictions

4. Earth's Systems

  1. Earth's atmosphere: Develop a model to describe ways the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere interact as connected Earth systems
  2. 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

5. History of Earth

  1. Fossils as Evidence: Analyse and interpret data from fossils to provide evidence of organisms and environments that existed long ago
  2. 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

6. Space Systems

  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. 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

7. Natural Selection and Adaptations

  1. How Natural Selection Works: Explain natural selection as the mechanism of evolution: heritable variation + competition for resources + differential survival and reproduction = change in allele frequency over generations
  2. 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
  3. Reading Cladograms: Read and create simple cladograms (branching diagrams) that show how groups of dinosaurs are related based on shared features, understanding that species sharing more features are more closely related

8. Growth, Development, and Reproduction of Organisms

  1. Inherited characteristics: Analyse and interpret data to provide evidence that plants and animals have traits inherited from parents and that variation of these traits exists in a group of similar organisms
  2. 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
  3. 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
  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

9. Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems

  1. Rainforest Futures & Trade-Offs: Understand that the future of rainforests depends on balancing competing needs — economic development for local communities, indigenous peoples' rights to their ancestral lands, global biodiversity conservation, and climate stability — and that there are no simple answers, requiring cooperation between governments, businesses, scientists, indigenous leaders, and consumers worldwide
  2. 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

10. Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems

  1. Communities Protecting Resources: Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth's resources and environment
  2. Matter Cycling in Ecosystems: Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment in an ecosystem
  3. 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
  4. 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

11. Structure, Function, and Information Processing

  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. Cells to Organ Systems: Describe the hierarchical organisation of multicellular organisms: cells → tissues → organs → organ systems → organism
  3. 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

12. Waves and Electromagnetic Radiation

  1. 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
  2. Waves & How They Move: Develop a model of waves to describe patterns in terms of amplitude and wavelength, and understand that waves can cause objects to move

13. 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)

14. Forces and Interactions

  1. Resultant Forces: Describe forces as vector quantities with both magnitude and direction, distinguish between balanced forces (zero resultant, no change in motion) and unbalanced forces (non-zero resultant, causes acceleration or deceleration)
  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. 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
  4. 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
  5. 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

15. Chemical Reactions

  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. Physical vs Chemical Changes: Distinguish between physical changes (reversible, no new substances formed) and chemical changes (new substances formed, often irreversible), using conservation of mass to understand both types

16. Structure and Properties of Matter

  1. 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
  2. Matter Is Made of Particles: Develop a model to describe that matter is made of particles too small to be seen, and that this explains properties of solids, liquids, and gases
  3. 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