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How to learn Grade 6: Science

Wyoming academic standards: Science, Grade 6

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1. Engineering, Technology, & Applications of Science

  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

2. Earth and Human Activity

  1. Earth's Atmosphere & CO2: Describe the composition of Earth's atmosphere (mainly nitrogen and oxygen, with small amounts of CO₂ and other gases), explain how human activity increases CO₂, and describe the impact on global climate
  2. Communities Protecting Resources: Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth's resources and environment
  3. Hazard Assessment & Evacuation: Explain probabilistic hazard assessment using eruption recurrence intervals and fault slip rates; describe how volcano observatories monitor ground deformation, gas emissions, and seismicity to issue alert levels; explore why communities remain near active hazards (fertile volcanic soil, poverty, cultural ties); discuss the ethics and politics of evacuation decisions and the social justice dimensions of disaster risk

3. Earth's Systems

  1. Climate Zones: Understand that Earth has distinct climate zones — tropical (hot and wet near the equator), temperate (moderate, with four seasons), polar (freezing cold), arid/desert (very dry), and mountain (cold at high altitude) — and that each zone supports different ecosystems and ways of life
  2. 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
  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. Fossils as Evidence: Analyse and interpret data from fossils to provide evidence of organisms and environments that existed long ago
  5. Earth's atmosphere: Develop a model to describe ways the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere interact as connected Earth systems
  6. The Rock Cycle: Explain the rock cycle: how igneous rocks form from magma, sedimentary rocks from compressed sediment, and metamorphic rocks from heat and pressure, and how all rock types can transform into one another over geological time

4. Earth's Place in the Universe

  1. 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
  2. The solar system (age 11+): Describe the detailed structure of the solar system, including moons, asteroids, and comets, compare orbital periods and distances of the planets, and distinguish between planets, dwarf planets, and other bodies
  3. Gravity Pulls Things Down: Understand gravity as a force that pulls objects towards the centre of the Earth, that 'down' means towards Earth’s centre regardless of where you stand on the sphere, and that gravity keeps the Moon orbiting Earth and planets orbiting the Sun
  4. 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. Shadows: Represent data in graphical displays to reveal patterns of daily changes in shadow length and direction, day and night cycles, and seasonal star patterns

5. Biological Evolution: Unity & Diversity

  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. 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
  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

6. Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits

  1. Offspring resemble parents: Observe that young plants and animals resemble their parents but are not identical, recognising inherited similarities and individual differences
  2. 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

7. Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics

  1. 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)
  2. 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
  3. 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

8. From Molecules to Organisms: Structures & Processes

  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. 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. Cells to Organ Systems: Describe the hierarchical organisation of multicellular organisms: cells → tissues → organs → organ systems → organism
  5. Classifying Organisms: Describe how living things are classified into broad groups (micro-organisms, plants, animals) according to common observable characteristics, similarities, and differences

9. Waves and Their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer

  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

10. Energy

  1. 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)
  2. Drawing Force Diagrams: Draw and interpret force diagrams showing forces as labelled arrows — where the arrow's length represents the force's magnitude and its direction shows which way the force acts; show multiple forces on one object; identify from the diagram whether forces are balanced (equal arrows in opposite directions, no resultant) or unbalanced (arrows of different sizes, producing a resultant); represent the resultant with a single arrow

11. Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions

  1. Static electricity and sparks: Explain static electricity as the build-up of electric charge through friction, describe how charged objects attract or repel each other, and relate static discharge to everyday phenomena such as lightning
  2. Gravity & Falling Objects: Explain that unsupported objects fall towards the Earth because of the force of gravity acting between the Earth and the falling object
  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. 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)

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. 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
  4. 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