SCIENCE - 3
Overview
Science Grade Three is an intermediate course with concepts across many types of sciences including Earth Science, Life Science, and Physical Science. Through asking questions, making predictions, making and comparing observations, making inferences, working with others to conduct investigations, explaining the results of investigations, developing models, constructing arguments, and making claims, students will learn about gravity, stars, forms of energy, motion, heat and light, properties and changes in matter, plant structures and functions, plant responses, plant and animal classification, and adaptations.
Major Topics and Concepts
- The Law of Gravity
- The Sun and other stars
- Distance affects the appearance of objects
- Fixed points of light
- Uses of a telescope
- Light, heat, sound, electrical, and mechanical energy
- Energy causes motion and change
- Balanced and unbalanced forces
- Cause and effect relationships of electric or magnetic interactions
- How heat is created
- Objects that give off both light and heat
- Radiant heat from the sun
- When the sun is not present, heat may be lost
- Weather conditions of each season
- Climate regions of the world
- Sources of light energy
- How light travels from one medium to another
- Reflected, refracted, and absorbed light
- Relationship between light and heat
- Asking questions to solve problems
- Scientists use models to help understand and explain how things work
- Recording examples
- Explaining what empirical evidence includes
- Measurements can be used as information
- Observations or measurements can be used to explain natural phenomena
- Conducting investigations
- Organizing observations
- Recording observations from investigations using pictures, writing, or charts and graphs
- Making inferences based on observations
- Comparing observations made by different groups using the same tool
- Using observations to make predictions on a pattern
- Constructing an argument
- Words in science can have different meanings
- Scientists work together
- Scientists compare their work to other scientists
- Physical properties of materials and objects
- Mass of a solid
- Volume of a liquid
- Measuring and comparing the temperatures of liquids and solids
- Solid, liquid, and gas as the three states of matter
- Properties of each state of water
- Change in state involves a change in temperature
- Parts of plants and their roles
- Plant reproduction
- How plants make their own food
- How plants respond to heat, light, and gravity
- Flowering and non-flowering plants
- Seed-producing and spore-producing plants
- Use of fossils as evidence
- Physical characteristics and behaviors of animals
- Classifying animals into major groups using their physical characteristics and behaviors
- How plants and animals respond to seasons
- Variations may provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing
- Organisms have unique and diverse life cycles
- Investigating a question
- Recording observations from an investigation using pictures, writing, or charts and graphs
- Explaining differences in observations and results
- Giving examples of empirical evidence
- Asking questions about the natural world
- Comparing the use of words in everyday language to their scientific meaning
- Scientists work together to form ideas
- Constructing an argument with evidence
- Making a claim
- Developing models
Grade 3
Annual
Students will need the following materials: printer, cell phone or scanner, pencils, scissors, notebook, erasers, crayons, glue, tape, handwriting paper, printer paper, colored paper, and other household items.
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