Third Grade: Ecosystems

Talking Science Through Texts > Third Grade > Ecosystems

Driving Questions: How are plants, animals, and environments of the past similar or different from current plants, animals, and environments? What happens to organisms when their environment changes?

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Third Grade Crosscutting Concepts

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Scale, Proportion, Quantity

Observable phenomena exist from very short to very long time periods.

Cause and Effect

Events have causes that generate observable patterns.

Systems and System Models

A system can be described in terms of its components and their interactions.

Talking Science: Crosscutting Concepts to Support Comprehension

Crosscutting concepts have application across all domains of science. As such, they are a way of linking the different domains of science. They include patterns; cause and effect; scale, proportion, and quantity; systems and system models; energy and matter; structure and function; and stability and change. The Framework emphasizes that these concepts need to be made explicit for students because they provide an organizational schema for interrelating knowledge from various science fields into a coherent and scientifically based view of the world.