Fourth Grade Science Content Standards

Students become ecologically literate — to understand the interconnectedness of humans and the environment and to live and act in ways which reflect this understanding.

Students develop knowledge and understanding of scientific ideas, as well as an understanding of how scientists study the natural world with increasingly higher levels of complexity.

Students use scientific strategies, knowledge and common sense to formulate questions about, understand and explain a wide range of phenomena.

Students seek knowledge and understanding by questioning, observing, investigating, analyzing and evaluating.

Fourth grade students are expected to:

• Physical Science
  • Electricity and magnetism are related effects that have many useful applications in every day life
    • Design and build simple series and parallel circuits using wires, batteries, and bulbs
    • Build a simple compass to detect magnetic effects, including Earth’s magnetic field
    • Understand that electric currents produce magnetic fields and build a simple electromagnet
    • Recognize the role of electromagnets in the construction of electric motors, electric generators, and simple devices such as doorbells and earphones
    • Understand electrically charged objects attract or repel each other
    • Know magnets have two poles, labeled north and south, and like poles repel each other while unlike poles attract each other
    • Understand electrical energy can be converted to heat, light and motion
• Life Science
  • All organisms need energy and matter to live and grow
    • Know that plants are the primary source of matter and energy
    • Know that producers and consumers (i.e. herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, decomposers) are related in food chains and food webs
    • Know that decomposers recycle matter from dead plants and animals
    • Living organisms depend on one another and on their environment for survival
    • Know ecosystems are made up of living and nonliving components
    • Know that in ecosystems, plants and animals differ in their ability to survive
    • Know that plants depend on animals (i.e. pollination, seed dispersal); animals depend on plants (i.e. food, shelter)
• Earth Science
  • The properties of rock and minerals reflect the processes that formed them
    • Identify igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks (i.e. the rock cycle)
    • Identify common rock-forming minerals (i.e. quartz, calcite, feldspar, mica, hornblende); and identify minerals by their diagnostic properties
  • Waves, wind, water, and ice shape and reshape the Earth’s land surface
    • Learn about erosion, landslides volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes
    • Rocks are broken down by natural resources (i.e. contraction, expansion) and natural processes, including freezing/thawing and growth of roots, cause rocks to break down into smaller pieces
    • Landforms are reshaped by moving water, (i.e. weathering, transport, deposition)
• Investigation and experimentation
  • Meaningful questions are necessary for scientific progress and careful investigations
    • Differentiate observation from inference (interpretation), and how scientists use both in their explanations
    • Measure and estimate weight, length, or volume of objects
    • Formulate predictions and justify them based on cause and effect
    • Test predictions and draw conclusions about the relationships between results and predictions
    • Explore animal and plant classification and adaptation
    • Construct and interpret graphs from measurements
    • Follow a set of written instructions for a scientific investigation

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