White Plains Science Curriculum Grades K-5

White Plains Science Curriculum Grades K-5

Children are naturally curious. The White Plains Elementary Science Curriculum fosters this curiosity by providing students with opportunities to have direct experience with common objects, materials and living things in their environment. Emphasis is placed on understanding important relationships, mechanisms and processes and on applying concepts in science, rather than on the memorization of specialized terminology or technical details. Much of the content in science is explored while fostering literacy skills through nonfiction content reading, as well as children's literature that incorporates accurate science concepts within fictional reading selections. For this reason, the science curriculum units outlined in the attached documents are designed to provide instruction in science every other day. The balance of the expectation of daily science instruction set forth by the State is provided through interdisciplinary units linking science with the literacy and mathematics curricula.

Each grade level has four or five science curriculum units. The units may be implemented in different sequences by different teachers.The units are designied to be taught in any order, so while the skills of science build upon previous experience throughout the school year, the content of one unit is not dependent upon the previous introduction ofanother unit in the same grade. The following chart gives an outline of the curriculum units taught at each grade level.*

Kindergarten	Variety of Senses	Variety of Living Things		Variety of Materials		Variety of Weather Conditions and Seasons		Sand and Water Play
First Grade	Properties of Plants and Animals in Woodland and Pond Habitats		Properties and Changes in Solids and Liquids		Comparing and Measuring		Properties of Air and Weather
Second Grade	Changes in Plants (Life Cycles)		Changes in Animals (Life Cycles)		Changes in Things that Sink or Float		Changes in Balance and Motion
Third Grade	Soils, Sand and Clay: Planting Variables		Animal Adaptations and Behavior		Metric Measurement		Interactions in the Human Body
Fourth Grade	Buoyant Systems	Plant Growth and Development		Models and Designs		Electric and Magnetic Systems		NYS Elementary-Level Science Test Review
Fifth Grade	Chemical Interactions		Energy Interactions		Microscopic Interactions		Variables Affecting Motion

*Units are not sequential and may be taught in a different order by individual teachers.