Nurturing Life
Correlations to National Science Standards
Correlations to National Science Standards
Grades K–4
Science as Inquiry – Content Standard A
Understandings about Scientific Inquiry
- Scientists use different kinds of investigations depending on the questions they are trying to answer. Types of investigations include describing objects.
Life Science – Content Standard C
The Characteristics of Organisms
- Organisms have basic needs. For example, animals need air, water, and food; plants require air, water, nutrients, and light. Organisms can survive only in environments in which their needs can be met. The world has many different environments, and distinct environments support the life of different types of organisms.
Life Science – Content Standard D
Properties of Earth Materials
- Soils have properties of color and texture, capacity to retain water, and ability to support the growth of many types of plants, including those in our food supply.
Science and Technology – Content Standard E
Understandings about Science and Technology
- Scientists and engineers often work in teams with different individuals doing different things that contribute to the results. This understanding focuses primarily on teams working together and secondarily on the combination of scientist and engineer teams.
- Tools help scientists make better observations, measurements, and equipment for investigations. They help scientists see, measure, and do things that they could not otherwise see, measure, and do.
Grades 5–8
Science as Inquiry – Content Standard A
Understandings about Scientific Inquiry
- Different kinds of questions suggest different kinds of scientific investigations. Some investigations involve observing and describing objects; some involve collecting specimens; some involve seeking more information; some involve discovery of new objects.
- Current scientific knowledge and understanding guide scientific investigations.
- Technology used to gather data enhances accuracy and allows scientists to analyze and quantify results of investigations.
Life Science – Content Standard C
Regulation and Behavior
- All organisms must be able to obtain and use resources, grow, reproduce, and maintain stable internal conditions while living in a constantly changing external environment.
- Extinction of a species occurs when the environment changes and the adaptive characteristics of a species are insufficient to allow its survival. Fossils indicate that many organisms that lived long ago are extinct. Extinction of species is common; most of the species that have lived on the earth no longer exist.
Earth and Space Science – Content Standard D
Earth’s History
- Fossils provide important evidence of how life and environmental conditions have changed.
History and Nature of Science – Content Standard G
Nature of Science
- Scientists formulate and test their explanations of nature using observation, experiments, and theoretical and mathematical models. Although all scientific ideas are tentative and subject to change and improvement in principle, for most major ideas in science, there is much experimental and observational confirmation. Those ideas are not likely to change greatly in the future. Scientists do and have changed their ideas about nature when they encounter new experimental evidence that does not match their existing explanations.
June 12, 2013
