What does a student learn in StateIdaho,GradeGrade 6,SubjectScience?

Students examine what matter is made of and how different materials interact, change, or combine. This covers the building blocks of substances and what happens when they mix, react, or transform.

Students draw or build models showing how atoms link together to form simple molecules, like water or oxygen gas. The focus is on what atoms are present and how they connect, not memorizing formulas.

Students compare what a substance looks, smells, or feels like before and after mixing it with something else to figure out whether a chemical change happened or just a physical one.

Students explain where synthetic materials, like plastic or nylon, originally come from. The explanation traces each human-made material back to a natural resource, using evidence to show the connection.

Students build a diagram or model showing what happens to the tiny particles inside a substance when it heats up or cools down, explaining why ice melts, water boils, or steam condenses back into liquid.

In a chemical reaction, atoms rearrange into new substances but none appear or disappear. Students build a model showing that the total number of atoms before and after the reaction stays the same, which is why mass doesn't change.

Students design and test something that uses a chemical reaction to produce heat or cold, like a hand warmer or a cold pack, then adjust the design based on what they observe.

Students study why objects speed up, slow down, or change direction by examining the forces acting on them. They learn how balanced and unbalanced forces determine whether something stays still or moves.

When two objects collide, each one pushes back on the other with equal force. Students use that idea to design a solution to a real problem involving collisions.

Students set up experiments to show that a heavier object needs more force to speed up or slow down, and that two forces pushing in opposite directions partly cancel each other out.

Students look at data to figure out what makes electric and magnetic forces stronger or weaker. They ask questions about patterns in the data, such as what happens when two magnets move closer together or farther apart.

Students build an argument, using examples and data, that gravity pulls objects toward each other and that heavier objects pull with more force than lighter ones.

Students test how magnets or electric charges push and pull each other without touching. They also judge whether the experiment was set up well enough to trust the results.

Students study how energy moves and changes form, from heat and light to motion and sound. They learn what makes objects speed up, slow down, or stay warm, and how energy transfers from one object to another.

Students read and build graphs showing how a moving object's energy changes when it gets heavier or faster. A heavier car rolling downhill carries more energy than a lighter one; a faster car carries more energy than a slower one.

Students draw or diagram how the positions of objects affect stored energy in a system, such as how a ball held higher stores more energy than one held lower, or how magnets store more energy when pushed closer together.

Students design and build a device to control heat, then test whether it works. Think of it as engineering a cooler that keeps ice frozen or a container that keeps soup hot.

Students design an experiment to test how heating different materials changes their temperature. They look at how the amount of material and the type of material affect how much heat it takes to warm something up.

When a moving object speeds up or slows down, energy has moved into or out of it. Students learn to build a real argument, using evidence, for why that energy had to go somewhere.

Students learn how waves carry energy through water, air, and other materials. They study how waves behave when they hit surfaces, pass through objects, or travel from one material to another.

Students read a diagram of a wave and explain what its height, spacing, and repetition tell us. A taller wave carries more energy, and a wave that repeats more often has a higher frequency.

Waves hit a surface and do one of three things: bounce back, get soaked up, or pass through. Students model how different materials, like glass, wood, or water, affect what happens to a wave.

Digitized signals turn sound, images, and text into strings of 0s and 1s. Students explain how that binary code lets information travel reliably across devices and networks.

Living things are built from cells, and those cells run on chemical processes. Students learn how organisms take in food, water, and air and convert those inputs into energy and growth.

Students investigate living things to show that every organism is built from cells. Some organisms, like bacteria, are a single cell. Others, like plants and animals, contain many cells working together.

Students learn how a cell works as a living unit and how its parts, like the nucleus and membrane, each handle a specific job that keeps the whole cell running.

Living things are made of cells that work together in groups. Students explain how those groups form larger systems (like a digestive or nervous system) and show, with evidence, how those systems depend on each other to keep the organism alive.

Students pick an object or organism and use real evidence to argue whether it is alive or not. They support their claim the way a scientist would, pointing to specific traits like growth, reproduction, or response to the environment.

Students explain how plants use sunlight, water, and air to make food, and how that process moves energy and materials through living things. This is the foundation of nearly every food chain on Earth.

Food doesn't just disappear when the body uses it. Students learn how cells break food apart and rearrange its molecules through chemical reactions to build new body parts or release energy.

Students study how living things in an ecosystem depend on each other and on their surroundings to survive. They trace how energy moves through food webs and explore what happens when ecosystems are disrupted.

Students look at real data to explain how the amount of food, water, or space in an area shapes whether a population grows, shrinks, or holds steady. Scarce resources limit how many organisms can survive in one place.

Students predict how organisms in different ecosystems interact, such as how predators and prey keep each other's populations in check. The goal is to spot patterns that show up across many environments, not just one.

Students trace how matter (like carbon or water) moves through an ecosystem and how energy flows from the sun through plants, animals, and soil. They build a diagram or model to show how living things and their environment stay connected.

Students trace how energy moves from plants to plant-eaters to predators in a food chain. They build a diagram or model showing how much energy passes from one level to the next.

When a river dries up or a new predator arrives, the animals and plants living there change too. Students use real examples to argue why a shift in one part of an ecosystem ripples through the populations that depend on it.

Students look at real threats to an ecosystem, such as habitat loss or invasive species, then propose and test solutions that keep the web of plants and animals intact and the land, water, and air usable.

Students learn how traits, like eye color or height, pass from parents to offspring and why children look similar to but not exactly like their parents.

A mutation is a change in a gene. Students learn why that change can hurt an organism, help it survive, or make no difference at all, depending on which part of the body the gene controls.

Asexual reproduction copies a parent's genetic information exactly, so offspring look like clones. Sexual reproduction mixes genetic information from two parents, which is why siblings from the same parents can look different from each other.

Students study why living things look and behave differently across species, and how those differences help each organism survive in its environment.

Fossils are clues about life long before humans existed. Students study fossil records to spot patterns in how living things appeared, changed, or died out over millions of years.

Students compare body parts across living animals and fossils to figure out which species share a common ancestor. A fish fin and a human arm, for example, have the same underlying bone structure because they come from the same evolutionary line.

Students look at bones, body parts, or other physical features across related animals and compare what matches. Similar structures across species are a clue that those animals share a common ancestor.

Some animals in a group are born slightly different from the others. Students explain, using real evidence, how those differences can make certain individuals more likely to survive and have offspring in a given place.

Students learn how humans use science and technology to control which traits get passed down in plants and animals. That includes selective breeding and genetic tools used in farming, medicine, and conservation.

Students use graphs and data to explain why certain traits become more or less common in a population over generations. The math shows how natural selection shifts what a group of living things looks like over time.

Students learn where Earth sits in the solar system and how it compares to other planets, moons, and stars. They study patterns in the sky and what those patterns tell us about how Earth and the universe work.

Students build and use a model of the Earth, Sun, and Moon to explain why the Moon appears to change shape each month, why eclipses happen, and why seasons shift throughout the year.

Gravity pulls every planet, moon, and star toward other objects with mass. Students use diagrams or simulations to show how that pull keeps planets orbiting the sun and moons orbiting planets instead of drifting into space.

Students compare the sizes and distances of planets, moons, and the sun using real data. The numbers are so large that students use models and scaled diagrams to make sense of them.

Rock layers act like a timeline buried in the ground. Students study how geologists read those layers to place major events, like mass extinctions or the rise of new life forms, in order across billions of years of Earth's history.

Students learn how Earth's major systems (the atmosphere, oceans, land, and living things) interact and affect one another. A change in one system, like a volcanic eruption or a rainstorm, can ripple through the others.

Rocks don't stay the same forever. Students learn how heat deep inside Earth and forces on the surface (like water and wind) slowly break down, melt, and rebuild rocks over millions of years, tracing the path materials take through each stage of the cycle.

Rocks, landforms, and coastlines change over time because of forces like erosion, earthquakes, and volcanic activity. Students study real evidence to explain how those changes happen slowly over millions of years or quickly in a single event.

Students study where fossils, rock layers, and ocean floor structures show up on a map to figure out how Earth's giant landmasses have shifted over millions of years.

Students diagram how water moves from oceans and lakes into the air, then falls back as rain or snow, and flows downhill into rivers and seas. The Sun's heat and gravity keep that cycle running.

Students gather weather data to figure out how moving air masses collide and push against each other, causing storms, temperature swings, and other shifts in daily weather.

Students build and use a diagram or model to explain why some places on Earth are hotter than others, and how that uneven heat, combined with Earth's spin, drives wind and ocean currents that shape each region's climate.

Students study how humans depend on Earth's natural resources and how our choices affect land, water, and the air over time.

Students explain why oil, metals, and fresh water are found in some places on Earth and not others. The answer comes from geology: ancient volcanoes, shifting plates, and slow changes underground determine what ends up where.

Students study real data from past earthquakes, floods, and storms to spot patterns. The goal is to predict when and where disasters might strike next, so communities can prepare.

Students design a plan to track how human activity affects the environment and look for ways to make that impact better. The focus is on building a real monitoring method, not just naming the problem.

Students build a case, using real data, for how a growing population and rising resource use (think water, fuel, or farmland) can help or harm the land, air, and water around us.

Students look at evidence from ice cores, fossils, and rock layers to ask questions about why Earth's climate has shifted over time, from ice ages to warmer periods.