Third grade science topics taught in this second semester class include:
1. Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits (Patterns are the similarities and differences in traits shared between offspring and parent or among siblings. Emphasis in third grade is on organisms other than humans.)
2. Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity
3. Earth's Systems
4. Earth and Human Activity
The Next Generation Science Standards (nextgenscience.org) will be used to guide course instruction and ensure learners have the needed skills for fourth grade.

In keeping with the Next Generation Science standards, science and engineering practices along with crosscutting concepts will be incorporated as learners participate in class. For example, when learners study biological evolution they will create an animal that can adapt to an environment (engineering) and discuss the cause and effect of the animal adaptations (crosscutting concept).

Specific weekly objectives for this course:
1. Describe characteristics of organisms which are inherited from their parents and understand some characteristics are a result of environment.
2. Explore how different organisms vary and how they look and function because they have different inherited information.
3. Analyze graphics to interpret data to make sense of inherited traits in organisms. 
4. Tell how fossils provide evidence of organisms that lived long ago.
5. Continue studies to tell how fossils provide evidence of organisms that lived long ago. 
6. Determine why some organisms survive in a particular and environment and what circumstances lead to natural selection.
7. Create a new animal that can live in an assigned environment. Learners will be given a particular environment (i.e. arctic, desert, rain forest, mountains) and will engineer and design an animal which has adaptions for the environment. 
8. Discuss patterns of weather and the tools used to record the weather.
9. Review as this is the halfway mark of class. 
10. Identify natural hazards which result from natural processes.
11. Continue studies to identify natural hazards which result from natural processes. 
12. Research a natural hazard. Make a claim about the merit of a solution to the problem by citing relevant evidence about how it meets the criteria and constraints of the problem. 
13. Time and teacher help/support to work on research project from week 12. Presentations of projects.
14. STEM Challenge to be announced in class. 
15. Begin Semester Project
16. Complete Semester Project and present projects. 

The class will be structured as teacher facilitated and interactive. Learners will be engaged in games, discussions, videos and hands-on projects. My teaching style is relaxed and inclusive. I encourage learner participation and questions. The classroom is 'ours' not 'mine'. Learners will have many opportunities to interact with me and their classmates each week.