Phenomena, standards, and progressions

Grade 6

The Amplify Science units can be arranged at the discretion of the individual school, but suggested sequences are available. The grade 6 program in the suggested sequence below progressively builds students’ abilities to meet all the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) grade-level performance expectations through a three-dimensional instructional sequence. The following is an overview of the sample sequence of units, a description of the progression of student learning across the year, and a summary of how the sequence meets all NGSS performance expectations for grade 6.

Scroll down to see the phenomenon, student role, and performance expectations by unit, or click to jump to the Progression and Organization, Disciplinary Core Ideas, Crosscutting Concepts Core Ideas, or Science and Engineering Practices.

Sequence of units

  • Microbiome
  • Metabolism
  • Metabolism Engineering Internship
  • Traits and Reproduction
  • Thermal Energy
  • Ocean, Atmosphere, and Climate
  • Weather Patterns
  • Earth’s Changing Climate
  • Earth’s Changing Climate Engineering Internship

 

Microbiome

The presence of 100 trillion microorganisms living on and in the human body may keep the body healthy.
As student researchers, students must figure out why a fecal transplant cured a patient suffering from a deadly C. difficile infection. In the process, they learn about cells and about interactions among organisms.
  • LS1-1: Living Things Made of Cells
  • LS1-2: Cell Parts
  • LS1-3: Body Systems
  • LS2-1: Resources and Populations
  • LS2-2: Ecosystem Relationships

Metabolism

Elisa, a young patient, feels tired all the time.
Students take on the role of medical students and diagnose a patient whose body systems aren’t working. They learn about cellular respiration and how body systems work together to get molecules to the cells.
  • LS1-1: Living Things Made of Cells
  • LS1-2: Cell Parts
  • LS1-3: Body Systems
  • LS1-7: Cellular Respiration
  • LS1-8: Sensory Receptors

Metabolism Engineering Internship

Designing health bars with different molecular compositions can effectively meet the metabolic needs of patients or rescue workers.
As food engineering interns, students apply their knowledge of human metabolism, as well as engineering and design concepts, to design a recipe for an energy bar that meets the needs of populations in areas devastated by natural disasters.
  • ETS1-1: Criteria and Constraints
  • ETS1-2: Evaluating Solutions
  • ETS1-3: Analyzing Results
  • ETS1-4: Modeling and Iterative Testing
  • LS1-7: Cellular Respiration

Traits and Reproduction

Darwin’s bark spider offspring have different silk flexibility traits, even though they have the same parents.
Working as student genetic researchers, students investigate the causes of surprising variation in spider silk flexibility. Students learn why organisms — even parents, offspring, and siblings — vary in their traits.
  • LS1-2: Cell Parts
  • LS1-4: Behaviors and Structures: Reproduction
  • LS1-5: Growth
  • LS3-1: Gene, Protein, Trait, and Mutations
  • LS3-2: Sexual vs. Asexual Reproduction
  • LS1-3: Body Systems
  • LS4-5: Artificial Selection and Genetic Engineering

Thermal Energy

One of two proposed heating systems for Riverdale School will best heat the school.
In their role as thermal scientists, students evaluate competing proposals for heating a school, applying what they learn about matter, energy, and temperature.
  • PS3-3: Thermal Energy Transfer
  • PS3-4: Energy and Temperature
  • PS3-5: Motion and Energy Transfer
  • PS1-1: Atomic Theory/Molecules
  • PS1-4: Phase Change
  • PS2-1: Newton's 3rd Law (Equal and Opposite Forces)

Ocean, Atmosphere, and Climate

During El Niño years, the air temperature in Christchurch, New Zealand is cooler than usual.
As climatologists, students must explain the pattern of temperature changes in El Niño years, which are impacting agriculture around the Pacific. They learn about how sunlight, ocean, and atmosphere interact to produce regional climate.
  • ESS2-6: Climate Patterns
  • PS1-4: Phase Change
  • PS3-3: Thermal Energy Transfer
  • ESS2-3: Evidence for Plate Motion
  • ESS2-5: Air Masses
  • ESS3-2: Natural Hazards

Weather Patterns

In recent years, rainstorms in Galetown have been unusually severe.
Students play the role of forensic meteorologists who must explain why powerful storms have increased after a manmade lake was built. They learn how air masses, water, and energy from the Sun produce weather phenomena.
  • ESS2-4: The Water Cycle
  • ESS2-5: Air Masses
  • PS1-4: Phase Change
  • PS3-3: Thermal Energy Transfer
  • ESS2-1: Earth's Materials
  • ESS2-6: Climate Patterns
  • ESS3-2: Natural Hazards

Earth’s Changing Climate

The ice on Earth’s surface is melting.
In their role as climatologists, students must explain why Earth’s ice is melting. They learn about how changes in the atmosphere are affecting the energy balance in the Earth’s system, and about humans’ role in these changes.
  • ESS3-3: Designs to Minimize Impact
  • ESS3-4: Human Population
  • ESS3-5: Factors for Global Temperature
  • LS2-1: Resources and Populations
  • LS2-4: Changes Affect Populations
  • ESS3-2: Natural Hazards
  • ESS3-4: Human Population

Earth’s Changing Climate Engineering Internship

Designing rooftops with different modifications can reduce a city’s impact on climate change.
As civil engineering interns, students apply design and engineering concepts as they create a plan for making changes to building rooftops. Their goal is to make a city more energy efficient, and thus reduce the carbon dioxide produced from combustion.
  • ESS3-3: Designs to Minimize Impact
  • ETS1-1: Criteria and Constraints
  • ETS1-2: Evaluating Solutions
  • ETS1-4: Modeling and Iterative Testing
  • PS4-2: Waves Interact with Materials
  • ESS3-5: Factors for Global Temperature

Progression and organization

The units in grade 6 are designed and sequenced to build students’ expertise with the grade- level disciplinary core ideas (DCIs), science and engineering practices (SEPs) and crosscutting concepts (CCCs). The year begins with a launch unit, Microbiome, where students are introduced to essential practices, routines, and approaches that will serve as touchstones for each following unit. An important example of this is the SEP of Engaging in Argument from Evidence. Students are introduced to the practice of scientific argumentation in the launch unit, then build on this understanding through the year, with each unit focusing more in-depth on one aspect of the practice. The Microbiome unit also has an emphasis on the CCC of Scale, Proportion, and Quantity which students will draw upon in the Metabolism, Metabolism Engineering Internship, Traits and Reproduction, and Thermal Energy units as they make sense of phenomena at the macro scale with causes at a much smaller scale.

Concepts and practices are connected across grade 6. For example, across the sequence of the Microbiome, Metabolism, and Traits and Reproduction units, students are introduced to cells, and deepen their understanding about cells’ functions and how they get what they need. (They will continue this learning in grade 7.) Across the sequence of the Thermal Energy; Ocean, Atmosphere, and Climate; Weather Patterns; Earth’s Changing Climate; and Earth’s Changing Climate Engineering Internship units, students build a deepening understanding of energy transfer and its effects on Earth systems. The Metabolism Engineering Internship unit follows the Metabolism unit and requires students to apply what they learned in the Metabolism unit to design a solution to an engineering problem. The same is true of the Earth’s Changing Climate Engineering Internship unit and the Earth’s Changing Climate unit.

Each unit has a particular emphasis on certain DCIs, CCC’s, and SEP’s, with combinations that work together to support deep explanations of the anchor phenomena of each unit. For example, in the Weather Patterns unit, investigating the cause of more frequent severe storms leads students to construct ideas about Cycling of Water through Earth’s Systems (DCI ESS2-4) and Air Masses and Weather Patterns (DCI ESS2-5). The use of the SEP of modeling and the CCC of Stability and Change serve to help students better understand something difficult to observe directly: the way energy transfers between air parcels, then reaches equilibrium.

Unit abbreviations: Microbiome (MB), Metabolism (MET), Metabolism Engineering Internship (MET EI), Traits and Reproduction (TR), Thermal Energy (TE), Ocean, Atmosphere, and Climate (OAC), Weather Patterns (WP), Earth’s Changing Climate (ECC), Earth’s Changing Climate Engineering Internship (ECC EI).

Disciplinary core ideas

Focal   Other Emphasized

MB MET MET EI TR TE OAC WP ECC ECC EI
LS1.A: Structure and Function (MS-LS1-1, MS-LS1-2, MS-LS1-3)
LS1.B: Growth and Development of Organisms (MS-LS1-4, MS-LS3-2)
LS1.D: Information Processing (MS-LS1-8)
LS3.A: Inheritance of Traits (MS-LS3-2)
LS3.B: Variation of Traits (MS-LS3-2)
ESS2.C: The Roles of Water in Earth’s Surface Processes (MS-ESS2-4, MS-ESS2-5, MS-ESS2-6)
ESS2.D: Weather and Climate (MS-ESS2-5, MS-ESS2-6)
ESS3.C: Human Impacts on Earth Systems (MS-ESS3-3)
ESS3.D: Global Climate Change (MS-ESS3–5)
PS3.A: Definitions of Energy (MS-PS3-3, MS-PS3-4)
PS3.B: Conservation of Energy and Energy Transfer (MS-PS3-3, MS-PS3-4, MS-PS3–5)
ETS1.A: Defining and Delimiting an Engineering Problem (MS-ETS1-1, MS-PS3-3)
ETS1.B: Developing Possible Solutions (MS-ETS1-4, MS-PS3-3)
ETS1.C: Optimizing the Design Solution (MS-ETS1-3, MS-ETS1-4)

Crosscutting concepts

Focal   Other Emphasized   Additional

MB MET MET EI TR TE OAC WP ECC ECC EI
Patterns
Cause and Effect
Scale, Proportion, and Quantity
Systems and System Models
Energy and Matter
Stability and Change
Structure and Function

Science and engineering practices

Focal   Other Emphasized   Additional

MB MET MET EI TR TE OAC WP ECC ECC EI
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