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Important Scientific Concepts and the Science Curriculum 

in elementary science lesson plans

Most everyone agrees that our school science curriculum needs to be improved and teachers need help developing good elementary science lesson plans. Scientific education and literacy are becoming increasing important, and but national tests show a disturbing lack of scientific understanding in school age children.

According to The National Center for Improving Science Education, there are nine scientific concepts that elementary school children should learn and understand. These should certainly be incorporated into the school science curriculum, but parents can, and must, also play an important role in helping their kids learn science.

These nine concepts are:

1. Organization. Science is the study of the natural world. To help them understand how things work, scientists organize and classify the objects and events they observe. For example, a hierarchy is a series which ranks each part according to some characteristic: an atom, molecule, stone, mountain, planet. Or they can be grouped based on shared characteristics: mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, etc. Elementary school children can learn the concept of organization by collecting and sorting things according to their characteristics, for example objects like rocks, leaves or flowers.

2. Cause and effect. Science seeks to explain and understand the natural world. Things happen for a reason: there is a cause for every effect. Try to point these things out to your children during everyday activities. For example, plant growth. The grass grows because there is water and light. Without those things, the grass would die.

3. Systems. A system is a group of related, interacting parts that together form an interdependent whole. In science, there are two kinds of systems. One kind is the physical system involving matter and energy, and the way they move and react with the world and each other. The other is the system that we use to study the world, called The Scientific Method. Children can learn about systems by observing the changes in the various parts of the whole, using familiar things in their lives. For example, they can learn about equilibrium and balance by observing how an aquarium works.

4. Models. A model is something that is used to represent another thing. A model can be physical object, or a description of a thing or system. This may be hard at first for young children to understand. But you can start by drawing a picture or diagram, and comparing it to the actual object. For example, draw a picture or make a clay model of a tree, including roots, trunk, branches and leaves, and show your child how it relates to a real tree.

5. Scale. This refers to size and quantity. Playing with rulers and scales let children see that objects vary in quantity. Objects that are similar to each other can be larger or smaller, weigh more or less. For example, weigh and measure the heights of people, your family and friends. These differences will be obvious to children. There are other differences that are not obvious, but still exist and can be measured. For example, use a thermometer to measure temperature of warm and cold water, explaining that the temperature measures difference in the energy of the water.

6. Structure and function. There is a relationship between the way things look (and feel, sound, etc.), and how they act or what they do. Your dog's teeth are different from yours because of the different types of food you eat. Plants have different parts to do different jobs (leaves for photosynthesis, flowers for reproduction, roots to collect water and nutrients). Study the differences in the structure of objects around you and try to relate them to the different functions of those objects.

7. Change. The natural world constantly changes. Some of these are quick and easy to observe (for example, the weather). Other changes take place over days or months (phases of the moon). Still others take many years (the building of mountains). Observe come of the changes in the world around you. Experiment with water freezing, melting, evaporating and boiling. Explain to your children how these changes relate to the water cycle on our planet.

8. Variation. Everything, living or nonliving, has a set of characteristics, or properties, that make it different from all other. The world is full of variations. Some of these differences are small or insignificant, like different eye or hair colors. Other differences are much more significant, like the difference between living and non-living things. There are variations between individuals within a species (for example, breeds of dogs) as well as variations in a individual as it grows and changes throughout its life (how a caterpillar changes into a butterfly). In most of the natural world, things change constantly.

9. Diversity. This is the most obvious characteristic of the natural world. Even preschoolers know that there are many types of objects and organisms. In elementary school, youngsters need to begin understanding that diversity in nature is essential for natural systems to survive. Children can explore and investigate a pond, for instance, to learn that different organisms feed on different things.

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