Kindergarten Next Generation State Standards
Students who demonstrate understanding can:
K-PS3-1. Make observations of the effects of sunlight on Earth’s surface. Examples of Earth’s surface could include sand, soil, rocks, and water. Assessment of temperature is limited to relative measures such as warmer/cooler.
Through this standard, students gain an understanding of temperature along with examples of what the Earth’s surface is comprised of. This unit extends those understandings to go below the surface and learn how these same materials are throughout the layers of the Earth. The students will have had an opportunity to understand how high temperatures can occur, caused by the sun. This understanding can be applied during Activity One, that the temperature below the surface is hot enough to turn rocks into liquid.
K-PS3-2. Use tools and materials to design and build a structure.
In this unit, students make two structures to show their understanding. In Activities Three and Four, students demonstrate what they have learned about Earth’s layers and show their design skills in creating models that show those layers.
Science and Engineering Practices:
Planning and Carrying Out Investigations to answer questions or test solutions to problems in K–2 builds on prior experiences and progresses to simple investigations, based on fair tests, which provide data to support explanations or design solutions. Make observations (firsthand or from media) to collect data that can be used to make comparisons.
Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions in K–2 builds on prior experiences and progresses to the use of evidence and ideas in constructing evidence-based accounts of natural phenomena and designing solutions.
In this unit, students employ these practices as they work through the set of activities that ask them to build knowledge starting with the book, The Street Beneath My Feet and progressing to building models based on observations, evidence of natural phenomena, and designing from experience.
