ai.page · roadmaps

How to learn Grade 6: Science

Washington academic standards: Science, Grade 6

0 of 28 concepts ready to learn · Markdown, for your AI

1. Environmental and Sustainability Education · Demonstrate understanding of the connections between ecological, social, and economic systems by designing and implementing civic engagement projects that

  1. Communities Protecting Resources: Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth's resources and environment

2. 6–8 Engineering, Technology, and Applications of Science · Use modeling, investigation, and data to design, evaluate, and refine solutions to a problem that can be solved through engineering; include

  1. 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
  2. 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

3. Earth and Human Activity · Use data and evidence to construct explanations about the impact of human activities on Earth systems. Apply this understanding to engineer methods for monitoring and minimi

  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

4. Earth’s Systems · Use evidence, data, and modeling to create explanations of how Earth’s major systems (geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere) interact to shape Earth’s surface materials a

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

5. Earth’s Place in the Universe · Use data and modeling to explain Earth’s history and place in the universe, including patterns of celestial motion and solar system dynamics.

  1. Galaxies and the universe: Describe the scale of the universe, including the structure of galaxies, the position of the Sun in the Milky Way, and the use of light years as a unit of distance, and appreciate why space exploration requires enormous timescales
  2. 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
  3. Earth & Space Vocabulary: Use technical vocabulary for Earth's motion and the wider universe — rotation, revolution, axis, tilt, orbit, light year, gravitational force, atmosphere, lunar phases, waxing, waning, solstice, equinox, eclipse — and apply these when explaining day and night, the seasons, and the Moon's phases

6. Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity · Use evidence and data to create explanations of how organisms change over time in response to environmental shifts.

  1. 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
  2. Fossils as Evidence: Analyse and interpret data from fossils to provide evidence of organisms and environments that existed long ago
  3. 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

7. Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits · Develop and use models of how organisms pass traits from one generation to the next and how the environment affects the traits an organism develops, and

  1. Inheritance Vocabulary: Use vocabulary for variation and inheritance — inherited characteristic, acquired characteristic, variation, offspring, trait, species, breed, genetic, environment — and apply these when comparing organisms and explaining similarities and differences within and between species

8. Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics · Use evidence and modeling to support explanations of how living and non-living components of an ecosystem interact and are utilized by organisms. Apply

  1. 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

9. From Molecule to Organisms: Structures and Processes · Use evidence and modeling to support explanations of how cells contribute to the structure and function of living organisms.

  1. 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
  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. Evidence-Based Classification: Give reasons for classifying plants and animals based on specific characteristics, using evidence to justify classification decisions
  4. Cells to Organ Systems: Describe the hierarchical organisation of multicellular organisms: cells → tissues → organs → organ systems → organism

10. Waves and Their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer · Use modeling and mathematical representation to describe wave properties and their applications.

  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

11. Energy · Use evidence, data, and modeling to support claims about the transfer of energy between objects and systems. Apply this understanding to engineer a device that minimizes or maximizes the tran

  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. Speed and energy: Use evidence to construct an explanation relating the speed of an object to the energy of that object
  3. 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)

12. Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions · Use data from investigations to construct an argument about how different forces interact to create motion. Apply this understanding to engineer a solut

  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. 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

13. Matter and its Interactions · Use evidence, data, and modeling to show how atomic and molecular interactions explain the properties of matter. Apply this understanding to engineer a device that releas

  1. Reactions That Release or Absorb Heat: Distinguish between exothermic reactions (release energy, temperature rises) and endothermic reactions (absorb energy, temperature falls), with everyday and industrial examples
  2. 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)
  3. 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