Performance Expectations

The performance expectations in third grade help students formulate answers to questions such as:

• What is typical weather in different parts of the world and during different times of the year? 
• How can the impact of weather-related hazards be reduced?
• How do organisms vary in their traits?
• 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?
• How do equal and unequal forces on an object affect the object?
• How can magnets be used?”

Students are able to organize and use data to describe typical weather conditions expected during a particular season. By applying their understanding of weather-related hazards, students are able to make a claim about the merit of a design solution that reduces the impacts of such hazards. Students are expected to develop an understanding of the similarities and differences of organisms’ life cycles. An understanding that organisms have different inherited traits, and that the environment can also affect the traits that an organism develops, is acquired by students at this level. In addition, students are able to construct an explanation using evidence for how the variations in characteristics among individuals of the same species may provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing. Students are expected to develop an understanding of types of organisms that lived long ago and also about the nature of their environments.
Third graders are expected to develop an understanding of brhe idea that when the environment changes some organisms survive and reproduce, some move to new locations, some move into the transformed environment, and some die. Students are able to determine the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object and the cause and effect relationships of electric or magnetic interactions between two objects not in contact with each other. They are then able to apply their understanding of magnetic interactions to define a simple design problem that can be solved with magnets.

Calculation Method for DCI

Disciplinary Core Ideas are larger groups of related Performance Expectations. So the Disciplinary Core Idea Grade is a calculation of all the related Performance Expectations. So click on the Performance Expectation name below each Disciplinary Core Idea to access the learning targets and proficiency scales for each Disciplinary Core Idea's related Performance Expectations.

Clarification Statement: Examples could include an unbalanced force on one side of a ball can make it start moving; and balanced forces pushing on a box from both sides will not produce any motion at all.
Disciplinary Core Ideas
Each force acts on one particular object and has both strength and a direction. An object at rest typically has multiple forces acting on it, but they add to give zero net force on the object. Forces that do not sum to zero can cause changes in the object’s speed or direction of motion.

Student Learning Targets:

Knowledge Targets

• I can

Reasoning Targets

• I can

Skills (Performance) Targets

• I can

Product Targets

• I can

Proficiency Scale

The Student ...

Resources

Clarification Statement: Examples of motion with a predictable pattern could include a child swinging in a swing, a ball rolling back and forth in a bowl, and two children on a see-saw.
Disciplinary Core Ideas
The patterns of an object’s motion in various situations can be observed and measured; when that past motion exhibits a regular pattern, future motion can be predicted from it. (Boundary: Technical terms, such as magnitude, velocity, momentum, and vector quantity, are not introduced at this level, but the concept that some quantities need both size and direction to be described is developed.)

Proficiency Scale

Clarification Statement: Examples of static electricity are the force on hair from an electrically charged balloon, a charged rod and pieces of paper; examples of a magnetic force are the force between two magnets, the force between an electromagnet and steel paperclips. Examples of cause and effect relationships could include how the distance between objects affects strength of the force and how the orientation of magnets affects the direction of the magnetic force.
Disciplinary Core Ideas
Electric, and magnetic forces between a pair of objects do not require that the objects be in contact. The sizes of the forces in each situation depend on the properties of the objects and their distances apart and, for forces between two magnets, on their orientation relative to each other

Student Learning Targets:

Knowledge Targets

• I can

Reasoning Targets

• I can

Skills (Performance) Targets

• I can

Product Targets

• I can

Proficiency Scale

The Student ...

Resources

Clarification Statement: Examples of problems could include constructing a latch to keep a door shut and creating a device to keep two moving objects from touching each other.
Disciplinary Core Ideas
Electric, and magnetic forces between a pair of objects do not require that the objects be in contact. The sizes of the forces in each situation depend on the properties of the objects and their distances apart and, for forces between two magnets, on their orientation relative to each other.

Student Learning Targets:

Knowledge Targets

• I can

Reasoning Targets

• I can

Skills (Performance) Targets

• I can

Product Targets

• I can

Proficiency Scale

The Student ...

Resources