Grade 4 Science CA Core Standards

PRINCIPLE I: People Depend on Natural Systems The continuation and health of individual human lives and of human communities and societies depend on the health of the natural systems that provide essential goods and ecosystem services.

The goods produced by natural systems are essential to human life and to the functioning of our economies and cultures.

The ecosystem services provided by natural systems are essential to human life and to the functioning of our economies and cultures.

That the quality, quantity, and reliability of the goods and ecosystem services provided by natural systems are directly affected by the health of those systems.

PRINCIPLE II: People Influence Natural Systems The long‐term functioning and health of terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems are influenced by their relationships with human societies.

Direct and indirect changes to natural systems due to the growth of human populations and their consumption rates influence the geographic extent, composition, biological diversity, and viability of natural systems.

Methods used to extract, harvest, transport, and consume natural resources influence the geographic extent, composition, biological diversity, and viability of natural systems.

The expansion and operation of human communities influences the geographic extent, composition, biological diversity, and viability of natural systems.

The legal, economic, and political systems that govern the use and management of natural systems directly influence the geographic extent, composition, biological diversity, and viability of natural systems.

PRINCIPLE III: Natural Systems Change in Ways that People Benefit from and can Influence Natural systems proceed through cycles that humans depend upon, benefit from and can alter.

Natural systems proceed through cycles and processes that are required for their functioning.

Human practices depend upon and benefit from the cycles and processes that operate within natural systems.

Human practices can alter the cycles and processes that operate within natural systems.

PRINCIPLE IV: There are no Permanent or Impermeable Boundaries that Prevent Matter from Flowing Between Systems The exchange of matter between natural systems and human societies affects the long‐ term functioning of both.

The effects of human activities on natural systems are directly related to the quantities of resources consumed and to the quantity and characteristics of the resulting byproducts.

The byproducts of human activity are not readily prevented from entering natural systems and may be beneficial, neutral, or detrimental in their effect.

The capacity of natural systems to adjust to human-caused alterations depends on the nature of the system as well as the scope, scale, and duration of the activity and the nature of its byproducts

PRINCIPLE V: Decisions Affecting Resources and Natural Systems are Complex and Involve Many Factors Decisions affecting resources and natural systems are based on a wide range of considerations and decision‐making processes.

There is a spectrum of what is considered in making decisions about resources and natural systems and how those factors influence decisions.

The process of making decisions about resources and natural systems, and how the assessment of social, economic, political, and environmental factors has changed over time.

California: A Changing State

Historical Interpretation

Research, Evidence, and Point of View

Chronological and Spatial Thinking

Historical and Social Sciences Analysis Skills

Engineering Design

Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.

Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.

Plan and carry out fair tests in which variables are controlled and failure points are considered to identify aspects of a model or prototype that can be improved.

Earth's Place in the Universe

Identify evidence from patterns in rock formations and fossils in rock layers to support an explanation for changes in a landscape over time.

Earth's Systems

Make observations and/or measurements to provide evidence of the effects of weathering or the rate of erosion by water, ice, wind, or vegetation.

Analyze and interpret data from maps to describe patterns of Earth's features.

Earth and Human Activity

Obtain and combine information to describe that energy and fuels are derived from natural resources and their uses affect the environment.

Generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impacts of natural Earth processes on humans.

From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes

Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction.

Use a model to describe that animals' receive different types of information through their senses, process the information in their brain, and respond to the information in different ways.

Energy

Use evidence to construct an explanation relating the speed of an object to the energy of that object.

Make observations to provide evidence that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents.

Ask questions and predict outcomes about the changes in energy that occur when objects collide.

Apply scientific ideas to design, test, and refine a device that converts energy from one form to another.

Waves and their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer

Develop a model of waves to describe patterns in terms of amplitude and wavelength and that waves can cause objects to move.

Develop a model to describe that light reflecting from objects and entering the eye allows objects to be seen.

Generate and compare multiple solutions that use patterns to transfer information.

Students demonstrate an understanding of the physical and human geographic features that define places and regions in California.

Explain and use the coordinate grid system of latitude and longitude to determine the absolute locations of places in California and on Earth.

Distinguish between the North and South Poles; the equator and the prime meridian; the tropics; and the hemispheres, using coordinates to plot locations.

Identify the state capital and describe the various regions of Califor°nia, including how their characteristics and physical environments (e.g., water, landforms, vegetation, climate) affect human activity.

Identify the locations of the Pacific Ocean, rivers, valleys, and mountain passes and explain their effects on the growth of towns.

Use maps, charts, and pictures to describe how communities in California vary in land use, vegetation, wildlife, climate, population density, architecture, services, and transportation.

Students describe the social, political, cultural, and economic life and interactions among people of California from the pre-Columbian societies to the Spanish mission and Mexican rancho periods.

Discuss the major nations of California Indians, including their geographic distribution, economic activities, legends, and religious beliefs; and describe how they depended on, adapted to, and modi°fied the physical environment by cultivation of land and use of sea resources.

Identify the early land and sea routes to, and European settlements in, California with a focus on the exploration of the North Pacific (e.g., by Captain James Cook, Vitus Bering, Juan Cabrillo), noting especially the importance of mountains, deserts, ocean currents, and wind patterns.

Describe the Spanish exploration and colonization of California, including the relationships among soldiers, missionaries, and Indians (e.g., Juan Crespi, Junipero Serra, Gaspar de Portola).

Describe the mapping of, geographic basis of, and economic factors in the placement and function of the Spanish missions; and understand how the mission system expanded the influence of Spain and Catholicism throughout New Spain and Latin America.

Describe the daily lives of the people, native and nonnative, who occupied the presidios, missions, ranchos, and pueblos.

Discuss the role of the Franciscans in changing the economy of California from a hunter-gatherer economy to an agricultural economy.

Describe the effects of the Mexican War for Independence on Alta California, including its effects on the territorial boundaries of North America.

Discuss the period of Mexican rule in California and its attributes, including land grants, secularization of the missions, and the rise of the rancho economy.

Students explain the economic, social, and political life in California from the establishment of the Bear Flag Republic through the Mexican-American War, the Gold Rush, and the granting of statehood.

Identify the locations of Mexican settlements in California and those of other settlements, including Fort Ross and Sutter's Fort.

Compare how and why people traveled to California and the routes they traveled (e.g., James Beckwourth, John Bidwell, John C. Fremont, Pio Pico).

Analyze the effects of the Gold Rush on settlements, daily life, politics, and the physical environment (e.g., using biographies of John Sutter, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, Louise Clapp).

Study the lives of women who helped build early California (e.g., Biddy Mason).

Discuss how California became a state and how its new government differed from those during the Spanish and Mexican periods.

Students explain how California became an agricultural and industrial power, tracing the transformation of the California economy and its political and cultural development since the 1850s.

Understand the story and lasting influence of the Pony Express, Overland Mail Service, Western Union, and the building of the transcontinental railroad, including the contributions of Chinese workers to its construction.

Explain how the Gold Rush transformed the economy of California, including the types of products produced and consumed, changes in towns (e.g., Sacramento, San Francisco), and economic conflicts between diverse groups of people.

Discuss immigration and migration to California between 1850 and 1900, including the diverse composition of those who came; the countries of origin and their relative locations; and conflicts and accords among the diverse groups (e.g., the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act).

Describe rapid American immigration, internal migration, settlement, and the growth of towns and cities (e.g., Los Angeles).

Discuss the effects of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and World War II on California.

Describe the development and locations of new industries since the nineteenth century, such as the aerospace industry, electronics industry, large-scale commercial agriculture and irrigation projects, the oil and automobile industries, communications and defense industries, and important trade links with the Pacific Basin.

Trace the evolution of California's water system into a network of dams, aqueducts, and reservoirs.

Describe the history and development of California's public education system, including universities and community colleges.

Analyze the impact of twentieth-century Californians on the nation's artistic and cultural development, including the rise of the entertainment industry (e.g., Louis B. Mayer, Walt Disney, John Steinbeck, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, John Wayne).

Students understand the structures, functions, and powers of the local, state, and federal governments as described in the U.S. Constitution.

Discuss what the U.S. Constitution is and why it is important (i.e., a written document that defines the structure and purpose of the U.S. government and describes the shared powers of federal, state, and local governments).

Understand the purpose of the California Constitution, its key principles, and its relationship to the U.S. Constitution.

Describe the similarities (e.g., written documents, rule of law, consent of the governed, three separate branches) and differences (e.g., scope of jurisdiction, limits on government powers, use of the military) among federal, state, and local governments.

Explain the structures and functions of state governments, including the roles and responsibilities of their elected officials.

Describe the components of California's governance structure (e.g., cities and towns, Indian rancherias and reservations, counties, school districts).

Students place key events and people of the historical era they are studying in a chronological sequence and within a spatial context; they interpret time lines.

Students correctly apply terms related to time, including past, present, future, decade, century, and generation.

Students explain how the present is connected to the past, identifying both similarities and differences between the two, and how some things change over time and some things stay the same.

Students use map and globe skills to determine the absolute locations of places and interpret information available through a map's or globe's legend, scale, and symbolic representations.

Students judge the significance of the relative location of a place (e.g., proximity to a harbor, on trade routes) and analyze how relative advantages or disadvantages can change over time.

Students summarize the key events of the era they are studying and explain the historical contexts of those events.

Students identify the human and physical characteristics of the places they are studying and explain how those features form the unique character of those places.

Students identify and interpret the multiple causes and effects of historical events.

Students conduct cost-benefit analyses of historical and current events.

Students differentiate between primary and secondary sources.

Students pose relevant questions about events they encounter in historical documents, eyewitness accounts, oral histories, letters, diaries, artifacts, photographs, maps, artworks, and architecture.

Students distinguish fact from fiction by comparing documentary sources on historical figures and events with fictionalized characters and events.

Ethical complications arise from the opportunities provided by computing. With the ease of sending and receiving copies of media on the Internet, in formats such as video, photos, and music, students consider the opportunities for unauthorized use, such as online piracy and disregard of copyrights. The license of a downloaded image or audio file may restrict modification, require attribution, or prohibit use entirely.

Computing technologies enable global collaboration and sharing of ideas. Students solicit feedback from a diverse group of users and creators and explain how this input improves their computational artifacts.

The development and modification of computing technology is driven by people’s needs and wants and can affect groups differently. Students anticipate the needs and wants of diverse end users and propose ways to improve access and usability of technology, with consideration of potential perspectives of users with different backgrounds, ability levels, points of view, and disabilities.

New computing technologies are created and existing technologies are modified for many reasons, including to increase their benefits, decrease their risks, and meet societal needs. Students, with guidance from their teacher, discuss topics that relate to the history of computing technologies and changes in the world due to these technologies. Topics could be based on current news content, such as robotics, wireless Internet, mobile computing devices, GPS systems, wearable computing, and how social media has influenced social and political changes.

Impacts of Computing

People communicate about their code to help others understand and use their programs. Explaining one's design choices gives others a better understanding of one's work. Students may explain their step-by-step process of creating a program in a presentation or demonstration of their personal code journals. They describe how comments within code organize thought and process during the develpment of the program.

Collaborative computing is the process of creating computational artifacts by working in pairs or on teams. It involves asking for the contributions and feedback of others. Effective collaboration can often lead to better outcomes than working independently. With teacher guidance, students take turns in different roles during program development, such as driver, navigator, notetaker, facilitator, and debugger, as they design and implement their program.

Programs do not always run properly. Students need to understand how to test and make necessary corrections to their programs to ensure they run properly. Students successfully identify and fix errors in (debug) their programs and programs created by others. Debugging strategies at this level may include testing to determine the first place the solution is in error and fixing accordingly, leaving "breadcrumbs" in a program, and soliciting assistance from peers and online resources.

Intellectual property rights can vary by country, but copyright laws give the creator of a work a set of rights and prevents others from copying the work and using it in ways that they may not like. Students consider common licenses that place limitations or restrictions on the use of others' work, such as images and music downloaded from the Internet. When incorporating the work of others, students attribute the work. At this level, students could give attribution by including credits or links directly in their programs, code comments, or separate project pages.

Planning is an important part of the iterative process of program development. Students gain a basic understanding of the importance and process of planning before beginning to write code for a program. They plan the development of a program by outlining key features, time and resource constraints, and user expectations. Students should document the plan as, for example, a storyboard, flowchart, pseudocode, or story map.

Programs can be broken down into smaller parts, which can be incorporated into new or existing programs. Students incorporate predefined functions into their original designs. At this level, students do not need to understand all of the underlying implementation details of the abstractions that they use. For example, students could use code from a ping pong animation to make a ball bounce in a new basketball game. They could also incorporate code from a single-player basketball game to create a two-player game with slightly different rules.

Decomposition is the act of breaking down tasks into simpler tasks. This manages complexity in the problem solving and program development process. For example, students could create an animation to represent a story they have written. Students write a story and then break it down into different scenes. For each scene, they would select a background, place characters, and program actions in that scene.

Control structures specify the order (sequence) in which instructions are executed within a program and can be combined to support the creation of more complex programs. Events allow portions of a program to run based on a specific action. Conditionals allow for the execution of a portion of code in a program when a certain condition is true. Loops allow for the repetition of a sequence of code multiple times.

Variables are used to store and modify data. Students use variables in programs they create. At this level, students may need guidance in identifying when to create variables (i.e., performing the abstraction).

Different algorithms can achieve the same result, though sometimes one algorithm might be more appropriate for a specific solution. Students examine different ways to solve the same task and decide which would be the better solution for the specific scenario.

Algorithms & Programming

The accuracy of data analysis is related to how the data is represented. Inferences or predictions based on data are less likely to be accurate if the data is insufficient, incomplete, or inaccurate or if the data is incorrect in some way. Additionally, people select aspects and subsets of data to be transformed, organized, and categorized. Students should be able to refer to data when communicating an idea, in order to highlight and/or propose relationships, predict outcomes, highlight different views and/or communicate insights and ideas.

Raw data has little meaning on its own. Data is often sorted or grouped to provide additional clarity. Organizing data can make interpreting and communicating it to others easier. Data points can be clustered by a number of commonalities. The same data could be manipulated in different ways to emphasize particular aspects or parts of the data set.

All saved data requires space to store it, whether locally or not (e.g., on the cloud). Music, images, video, and text require different amounts of storage. Video will often require more storage and different format than music or images alone because video combines both. The level of detail represented by that data also affects storage requirements. For instance, two pictures of the same object can require different amounts of storage based upon their resolution, and a high-resolution photo could require more storage than a low-resolution video. Students select appropriate storage for their data.

Data & Analysis

Encryption is the process of converting information or data into a code, especially to prevent unauthorized access. At this level, students use patterns as a code for encryption, to protect information. Patterns should be decodable to the party for whom the message is intended, but difficult or impossible for those with unauthorized access.

Personal information can be protected physically and digitally. Cybersecurity is the protection from unauthorized use of electronic data, or the measures taken to achieve this. Students identify what personal information is and the reasons for protecting it. Students describe physical and digital approaches for protecting personal information such as using strong passwords and biometric scanners.

Information is sent and received over physical or wireless paths. It is broken down into smaller pieces called packets, which are sent independently and reassembled at the destination. Students demonstrate their understanding of this flow of information by, for instance, drawing a model of the way packets are transmitted, programming an animation to show how packets are transmitted, or demonstrating this through an unplugged activity in which they physically act this out.

Networks & Internet

Although computing systems vary, common troubleshooting strategies can be used across many different systems. Students use troubleshooting strategies to identify problems that could include a device not responding, lacking power, lacking a network connection, an app crashing, not playing sounds, or password entry not working. Students use and develop various solutions to address these problems. Solutions may include rebooting the device, checking for power, checking network availability, opening and closing an app, making sure speakers are turned on or headphones are plugged in, and making sure that the caps lock key is not on.

Hardware and software are both needed to accomplish tasks with a computing device. Students create a model to illustrate ways in which hardware and software work as a system. Students could draw a model on paper or in a drawing program, program an animation to demonstrate it, or demonstrate it by acting this out in some way. At this level, a model should only include the basic elements of a computer system, such as input, output, processor, sensors, and storage.

Computing devices often depend on other devices or components. Students describe physical and wireless connections to other components, including both input devices (e.g., keyboards, sensors, remote controls, microphones) and output devices (e.g., 3D printers, monitors, speakers).

Computing Systems

Compare and refine multiple algorithms for the same task and determine which is the most appropriate.

Create programs that use variables to store and modify data.

Create programs that include events, loops, and conditionals.

Decompose problems into smaller, manageable tasks which may themselves be decomposed.

Create programs by incorporating smaller portions of existing programs, to develop something new or add more advanced features.

Use an iterative process to plan and develop a program by considering the perspectives and preferences of others.

Observe intellectual property rights and give appropriate attribution when creating, remixing, or combining programs.

Test and debug a program or algorithm to ensure it accomplishes the intended task.

Perform different roles when collaborating with peers during the design, implementation, and review stages of program development.

Describe choices made during program development using code comments, presentations, and demonstrations.

Describe how computing devices connect to other components to form a system.

Demonstrate how computer hardware and software work together as a system to accomplish tasks.

Determine potential solutions to solve simple hardware and software problems using common troubleshooting strategies.

Explain that the amount of space required to store data differs based on the type of data and/or level of detail.

Organize and present collected data visually to highlight relationships and support a claim.

Use data to highlight and/or propose relationships, predict outcomes, or communicate ideas.

Discuss computing technologies that have changed the world, and express how those technologies influence, and are influenced by, cultural practices.

Propose ways to improve the accessibility and usability of technology products for the diverse needs and wants of users.

Seek and explain the impact of diverse perspectives for the purpose of improving computational artifacts.

Describe reasons creators might limit the use of their work.

Model how information is broken down into smaller pieces, transmitted as packets through multiple devices over networks and the Internet, and reassembled at the destination.

Describe physical and digital security measures for protecting personal information.

Create patterns to protect information from unauthorized access.