Phenomena, standards, and progressions

Grade 4

The Amplify Science grade 4 program progressively builds students’ abilities to meet all the grade-level performance expectations through a three-dimensional instructional sequence. The following is an overview of the sequence of units, a description of the progression of student learning across the year, and a summary of how the sequence meets all performance expectations for grade 4.

Sequence of units

  • Energy Conversions
  • Vision and Light
  • Earth’s Features
  • Waves, Energy, and Information

 

Energy Conversions

The fictional town of Ergstown experiences frequent blackouts.
Students take on the role of systems engineers for Ergstown, a fictional town that experiences frequent blackouts, and explore reasons why an electrical system can fail. Students apply what they learned as they choose new energy sources and energy converters for the town, then write arguments for why their design choices will make the town’s electrical system more reliable.
  • 4-PS3-1: Relationship Between Speed and Energy
  • 4-PS3-2: Energy can be Transferred
  • 4-PS3-4: Design an Energy Converter
  • 4-ESS3-1: Energy and Fuels
  • 4-PS3-3: Energy Transfers in Collisions
  • 4-ESS3-2: Reduce Impacts of Earth Processes

Vision and Light

The population of Tokay geckos in a rain forest in the Philippines has decreased since the installation of new highway lights.
As conservation biologists, students work to figure out why a population of Tokay geckos has decreased since the installation of new highway lights in the rain forest. Students use their understanding of vision, light, and information processing to figure out why an increase in light in the geckos’ habitat is affecting the population.
  • 4-PS4-2: Light is Necessary for Sight
  • 4-LS1-1: Internal and External Structures
  • 4-LS1-2: Information, Senses and the Brain

Earth’s Features

A mysterious fossil is discovered in a canyon within the fictional Desert Rocks National Park.
Playing the role of geologists, students help the director of Desert Rocks National Park explain how and when a particular fossil formed and how it came to be in its current location. Students figure out what the environment of the park was like in the past and why it has so many visible rock layers.
  • 4-ESS1-1: Evidence of Landscape Changes
  • 4-ESS2-1: Effects of Weathering and Erosion
  • 4-ESS2-2: Patterns of Earth’s Features
  • 4-ESS3-2: Reduce Impacts of Earth Processes

Waves, Energy, and Information

Mother dolphins in the fictional Blue Bay National Park seem to be communicating with their calves when they are separated at a distance underwater.
In their role as marine scientists, students work to figure out how mother dolphins communicate with their calves. They write a series of scientific explanations with diagrams to demonstrate their growing understanding of how sound waves travel. Then they apply what they’ve learned about waves, energy, and patterns in communication to figure out how to create patterns that can communicate information over distances. As they solve these problems, students construct a foundational understanding of how waves transfer information from one place to another.
  • 4-PS3-2 Energy Can Be Transferred
  • 4-PS3-3: Collisions and Energy
  • 4-PS4-1: Waves
  • 4ESS3-2: Reduce Impacts of Earth Processes
  • 4-LS1-2: Info, Senses and the Brain

Progression and organization

The units in grade 4 were designed and sequenced to build students’ expertise with the grade-level disciplinary core ideas (DCIs), science and engineering practices (SEPs) and crosscutting concepts (CCCs). Each unit has focal SEPs and CCCs, carefully selected to support students in figuring out the unit’s focal DCIs.

Students begin the year with a focus on concepts about energy sources, transfer, and conversion in the Energy Conversions unit. An emphasis on the CCC of Energy and Matter helps students make sense of how energy is transferred and converted by different parts of an electrical system. Students apply what they learn as they engage in the focal SEP of Designing Solutions to design and evaluate solutions based on criteria to strengthen an electrical system, and construct evidence-based arguments for the best solution. Students’ understanding of the effect of different solutions on the function of the electrical system helps them as they move on to the Vision and Light unit and the effect of changes in the environment or to an animal’s vision system on the animal’s ability to sense its environment. In this unit, students ask questions and engage in the focal SEP of Planning and Conducting Investigations to make sense of how various structures in the eye function to help an organism see. In the Earth’s Features unit, students build on their knowledge of Cause and Effect CCC and experience with investigation as they use models to investigate how rock formation and erosion happen, and how these processes can affect a landscape over time. Students engage in Interpreting Data and Arguing from Evidence, the unit’s focal SEPs, as they interpret data and draw on accepted science ideas to show how that data supports claims about the geological history of a canyon with different layers of exposed rock. In the Waves, Energy, and Information unit, students dive more deeply into the practice of Developing and Using Models as they work to understand how sound travels as a wave and other patterns in communication. Students have a chance to apply ideas about energy transfer from the beginning of the year to make sense of the way that particle collisions transfer energy in a sound wave. This unit also provides another opportunity to design solutions, this time to complete a communication challenge to send a code across a distance.

The DCIs emphasized in each unit work together to support deep explanations of the unit’s anchor phenomenon. For example, in the Vision and Light unit, investigating why the tokay gecko population is declining in one particular area of a Philippine rain forest leads students to construct ideas about Structure and Function (DCI LS1.A), Information Processing (DCI LS1.D), and Electromagnetic Radiation (DCI PS4.B).

Disciplinary core ideas

Focal   Other Emphasized

Energy Conversions Vision and Light Earth’s Features Waves, Energy, and Information
PS3.A: Definitions of Energy (UE.PS3A.a, UE.PS3A.b)
PS3.B: Conservation of Energy and Energy Transfer (UE.PS3B.a, UE.PS3B.b, UE.PS3B.c)
PS3.C: Relationship Between Energy and Forces (UE.PS3C.a)
PS3.D: Energy in Chemical Processes and Everyday Life (UE.PS3D.a)
PS4.A: Wave Properties (UE.PS4A.a, UE.PS4A.b)
PS4.B: Electromagnetic Radiation (UE.PS4B.a)
LS1.A: Structure and Function (UE.LS1A.a)
LS1.D: Structure and Function (UE.LS1D.a)
ESS1.C: The History of Planet Earth (UE.ESS1C.a)
ESS2.A: Earth Materials and Systems (UE.ESS2A.a)
ESS2.B: Plate Tectonics and Large-Scale System Interactions (UE.ESS2B.a)
ESS2.E: Biogeology (UE.ESS2E.a)
ESS3.A: Natural Resources (UE.ESS3A.a)
ESS3.B: Natural Hazards (UE.ESS3B.a)
ETS1.B: Developing Possible Solutions to Engineering Problems (UE.ETS1B.d)
ETS1.C: Optimizing the Design Solution (UE.ETS1C.a)

Cross cutting concepts

Focal   Other Emphasized

Energy Conversions Vision and Light Earth’s Features Waves, Energy, and Information
Patterns
Cause and Effect
Scale, Proportion, and Quantity
This CCC is not identified in any grade 4 performance expectation.
Systems and System Models
Energy and Matter
Structure and Function
This CCC is not identified in any grade 4 performance expectation.
Stability and Change
This CCC is not identified in any grade 4 performance expectation.

Science and engineering practices

Focal   Other Emphasized   Additional

Energy Conversions Vision and Light Earth’s Features Waves, Energy, and Information
Asking Questions and Defining Problems
Developing and Using Models
Planning and Carrying Out Investigations
Analyzing and Interpreting Data
Using and Mathematics and Computational Thinking
Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions
Engaging in Argument from Evidence
Obtaining, Evaluating and Communicating Information