Curriculum expectations

Grades 5-7

From the Common Framework of Science Learning Outcomes K-12, Pan-Canadian Protocol for Collaboration on School Curriculum, Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC), 1997.

Space exploration

• Describe the composition and characteristics of the components of the solar system.
• Work cooperatively with team members to develop and carry out a plan, and troubleshoot problems as they arise.
• Receive, understand, and act on the ideas of others.
• Organize data using a format that is appropriate to the task or experiment.
• State a prediction and a hypothesis based on background information or an observed pattern of events;
• Identify new questions and problems that arise from what was learned.
• Describe and explain the role of experimentation, collecting evidence, finding relationships, proposing explanations, and imagination in the development of scientific knowledge.
• Explain the need for new evidence in order to continually test existing theories.

Sustainability of ecosystems

• Explain various ways in which natural populations are kept in equilibrium and relate this equilibrium to the resource limits of an ecosystem.
• Illustrate the cycling of matter through biotic and abiotic components of an ecosystem by tracking carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen.
• Analyse the impact of external factors on an ecosystem.
• Communicate questions, ideas, and intentions, and receive, interpret, understand, support, and respond to the ideas of others.
• Select and use apparatus and materials safely.
• State a prediction and a hypothesis based on available evidence and background information.
• Compile and display evidence and information, by hand or compute, in a variety of formats, including diagrams, flow charts, tables, graphs, and scatter plots.