Virginia State Standards for Science: Grade 9
VA.ES.1. Earth Science: The student will plan and conduct investigations in which a) volume, area, mass, elapsed time, direction, temperature, pressure, distance, density, and changes in elevation/depth are calculated utilizing the most appropriate tools; b) technologies, including computers, probeware, and global positioning systems (GPS) are used to collect, analyze, and report data and to demonstrate concepts and simulate experimental conditions; c) scales, diagrams, maps, charts, graphs, tables, and profiles are constructed and interpreted; d) variables are manipulated with repeated trials; e) a scientific viewpoint is constructed and defended (the nature of science).
ES.1.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that density expresses the relationship between mass and volume.
ES.1.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that information and data collected can be organized and expressed in the form of charts, graphs, and diagrams.
ES.1.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that changing relevant variables will generally change the outcome.
ES.1.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that a hypothesis can be supported, modified, or rejected based on collected data. A hypothesis is a tentative explanation that accounts for a set of facts and can be tested by further investigation.
ES.1.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that experiments are designed to test hypotheses.
ES.1.6. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that scientific laws are generalizations of observational data that describe patterns and relationships. Laws may change as new data become available.
ES.1.7. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that scientific theories are systematic sets of concepts that offer explanations for observed patterns in nature. Theories provide frameworks for relating data and guiding future research. Theories may change as new data become available.
ES.1.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to measure mass and volume of materials in the lab.
ES.1.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to interpret data from a graph or table that shows change in mass, density, or temperature over time.
ES.1.11. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to interpret data from a graph or table that shows changes in temperature or pressure with depth.
ES.1.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to compare topographic maps of different scales.
ES.1.13. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to construct a graph, table, chart, and/or diagram from data.
ES.1.14. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to interpret graphs and diagrams.
ES.1.15. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to use scientific methodology to design and test a hypothesis.
ES.1.16. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to compare and contrast hypotheses, theories, and scientific laws. For example, students should be able to compare/contrast the Law of Superposition and the Theory of Plate Tectonics.
VA.ES.2. Earth Science: The student will demonstrate scientific reasoning and logic by a) analyzing how science explains and predicts the interactions and dynamics of complex Earth systems; b) recognizing that evidence is required to evaluate hypotheses and explanations; c) comparing different scientific explanations for the same observations about the Earth; d) explaining that observation and logic are essential for reaching a conclusion; e) evaluating evidence for scientific theories.
ES.2.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that earth is a dynamic system, and all atmospheric, geological, and oceanographic processes interrelate and influence one another.
ES.2.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that conclusions are only as good as the quality of the collected data.
ES.2.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that any valid hypothesis can be tested.
ES.2.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that any valid scientific theory has passed tests designed to invalidate it.
ES.2.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that a hypothesis can be supported, modified, or rejected based on collected data.
ES.2.6. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that experiments are designed to test hypotheses.
ES.2.7. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that there can be more than one explanation for any phenomena.
ES.2.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to make predictions, using scientific data and data analysis.
ES.2.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to use data to support or reject a hypothesis.
ES.2.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to explain how the scientific method is used to validate scientific theories.
VA.ES.3. Earth Science: The student will investigate and understand how to read and interpret maps, globes, models, charts, and imagery. Key concepts include a) maps (bathymetric, geologic, topographic, and weather) and star charts; b) imagery (aerial photography and satellite images): c) direction and distance measurements on any map or globe: d) location by latitude and longitude and topographic profiles.
ES.3.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that scale relates to actual distance.
ES.3.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that topographic maps, air photos, and satellite images relate to actual 3-D landforms.
ES.3.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that grid systems are used to define locations and directions on maps, globes, and charts.
ES.3.4. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to read and interpret maps, including legends and lines (e.g., contour and isobar).
ES.3.5. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to locate points and directions on maps and globes, using latitude and longitude.
ES.3.6. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to construct profiles from topographic contours.
ES.3.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to determine distance and elevation on a map.
ES.3.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to identify a hilltop, stream, and valley on a topographic map.
VA.ES.4. Earth Science: The student will investigate and understand the characteristics of the Earth and the solar system. Key concepts include a) position of the Earth in the solar system; b) Sun-Earth-Moon relationships (seasons, tides, and eclipses); c) characteristics of the sun, planets, their moons, comets, meteors, and asteroids; d) the history and contributions of the space program.
ES.4.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that earth is one of nine planets in the solar system.
ES.4.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the solar system consists of many types of celestial bodies.
ES.4.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that much of our knowledge about the solar system is a result of space exploration efforts. These efforts continue to improve our understanding of the solar system.
ES.4.4. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the Earth is the third planet from the sun and is located between the sun and the asteroid belt. It has one natural satellite, the moon.
ES.4.5. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the Earth revolves around the sun, tilted on its axis, causing seasons (equinoxes and solstices).
ES.4.6. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the moon revolves around Earth creating the moon phases and eclipses.
ES.4.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that that solar eclipses occur when the moon blocks sunlight from Earth's surface, while lunar eclipses occur when Earth blocks sunlight from reaching the moon's surface.
ES.4.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that that tides are the daily, periodic rise and fall of water level caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and moon.
ES.4.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that that water occurs on Earth as a solid (ice), a liquid, or a gas (water vapor) due to Earth's position in the solar system.
ES.4.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the sun consists largely of hydrogen gas. Its energy comes from nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium.
ES.4.11. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that there are essentially two types of planets in our solar system.
ES.4.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the four inner (terrestrial) planets consist mostly of solid rock.
ES.4.13. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that that four of the outer planets are gas giants, consisting of thick outer layers of gaseous materials, perhaps with small rocky cores.
ES.4.14. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the fifth outer planet, Pluto, has an unknown composition but appears to be solid.
ES.4.15. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that that moons are natural satellites of planets that vary widely in composition.
ES.4.16. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that that comets orbit the sun and consist mostly of frozen gases.
ES.4.17. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that asteroids are rocky or metallic iron objects ranging in size from millimeters to kilometers. They are the source of most meteorites.
ES.4.18. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that Apollo 11 was the first manned landing on the moon.
ES.4.19. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the Hubble Space Telescope has greatly improved our understanding of the universe.
ES.4.20. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to draw a diagram of the solar system, and label the planets.
VA.ES.5. Earth Science: The student will investigate and understand how to identify major rock- forming and ore minerals based on physical and chemical properties. Key concepts include a) properties including hardness, color and streak, luster, cleavage, fracture, and unique properties; b) uses of minerals.
ES.5.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that there is a difference between rocks and minerals.
ES.5.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that minerals can be identified based on specific chemical and physical properties.
ES.5.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that minerals are important to human wealth and welfare.
ES.5.4. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that a mineral is a naturally occurring, inorganic, solid substance with a definite chemical composition and structure.
ES.5.5. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that minerals may be identified by their physical properties, such as hardness, color, luster, and streak.
ES.5.6. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that most rocks are made of one or more minerals.
ES.5.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that some major rock-forming minerals are quartz, feldspar, calcite, and mica.
ES.5.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that ore minerals include pyrite, magnetite, hematite, galena, graphite, and sulfur.
ES.5.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the major elements found in Earth's crust are oxygen, silicon, aluminum, and iron. The most abundant group of minerals is the silicates, which contain silicon and oxygen.
VA.ES.6. Earth Science: The student will investigate and understand how to identify common rock types based on mineral composition and textures and the rock cycle as it relates to the origin and transformation of rock types. Key concepts include a) igneous (intrusive and extrusive): b) sedimentary (clastic and chemical); c) metamorphic (foliated and unfoliate rocks).
ES.6.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that rocks can be identified on the basis of mineral content and texture.
ES.6.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the processes by which rocks are formed define the three major groups of rocks.
ES.6.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the rock cycle is the process by which all rocks are formed and how basic Earth materials are recycled through time.
ES.6.4. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that igneous rock forms from molten rock that cools and hardens either below or on Earth's surface.
ES.6.5. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that sedimentary rocks may be formed either by rock fragments or organic matter being bound together or by chemical precipitation.
ES.6.6. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that metamorphic rocks form when any rock is changed by the effects of heat, pressure, or chemical action.
ES.6.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that extrusive igneous rocks have small or no crystals, resulting in fine-grained or glassy textures.
ES.6.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that intrusive igneous rocks have larger crystals and a coarser texture.
ES.6.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that extrusive igneous rocks include pumice, obsidian, and basalt.
ES.6.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that intrusive igneous rocks include granite.
ES.6.11. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that sedimentary rocks are clastic or chemical.
ES.6.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that clastic sedimentary rocks are made up of fragments of other rocks and include sandstone, conglomerate, and shale.
ES.6.13. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that non-clastic sedimentary rocks include limestone and rock salt.
ES.6.14. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that metamorphic rocks can be foliated or unfoliated (non-foliated).
ES.6.15. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that foliated metamorphic rocks have bands of different minerals. Slate, schist, and gneiss are foliated metamorphic rocks.
ES.6.16. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that unfoliated metamorphic rocks have little or no banding and are relatively homogenous throughout. Marble and quartzite are unfoliated metamorphic rocks.
ES.6.17. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to interpret the rock cycle diagram.
ES.6.18. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to classify the following rock types as igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary: pumice, obsidian, basalt, granite, sandstone, conglomerate, shale, limestone, slate, schist, gneiss, marble, and quartzite.
VA.ES.7. Earth Science: The student will investigate and understand the differences between renewable and nonrenewable resources. Key concepts include a) fossil fuels, minerals, rocks, water, and vegetation; b) advantages and disadvantages of various energy sources; c) resources found in Virginia; d) making informed judgments related to resource use and its effects on Earth systems; e) environmental costs and benefits.
ES.7.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that resources are limited and are either renewable or nonrenewable.
ES.7.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that there are advantages and disadvantages to using any energy source.
ES.7.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that Virginia has many natural resources.
ES.7.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that modern living standards are supported by extensive use of both renewable and nonrenewable resources.
ES.7.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that extraction and use of any resource carries an environmental cost that must be weighed against economic benefit.
ES.7.6. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that renewable resources can be replaced by nature at a rate close to the rate at which they are used. Renewable resources include vegetation, sunlight, and surface water.
ES.7.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that nonrenewable resources are renewed very slowly or not at all. Nonrenewable resources include coal, oil, and minerals.
ES.7.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that fossil fuels are nonrenewable and may cause pollution, but they are relatively cheap and easy to use.
ES.7.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that in Virginia, major rock and mineral resources include coal for energy, gravel and crushed stone for road construction, and limestone for making concrete.
ES.7.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of various energy sources.
VA.ES.8. Earth Science: The student will investigate and understand geologic processes including plate tectonics. Key concepts include a) how geologic processes are evidenced in the physiographic provinces of Virginia including the Coastal Plain, Piedmont, Blue Ridge, Valley and Ridge, and Appalachian Plateau; b) processes (faulting, folding, volcanism, metamorphism, weathering, erosion, deposition, and sedimentation and their resulting features; c) tectonic processes (subduction, rifting and sea floor spreading, and continental collision).
ES.8.1. Essential Understandings: Virginia has a billion-year-long tectonic and geologic history.
ES.8.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that Virginia has five physiographic provinces produced by past tectonic and geologic activity.
ES.8.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that each province has unique physical characteristics resulting from its geologic past.
ES.8.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that geologic processes produce characteristic structures and features.
ES.8.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that weathering, erosion, and deposition are interrelated processes.
ES.8.6. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the core, mantle, and crust of Earth are dynamic systems, constantly in motion.
ES.8.7. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that earth's lithosphere is divided into plates that are in motion with respect to one another.
ES.8.8. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that most geologic activity (e.g., earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain building) occurs as a result of relative motion along plate boundaries.
ES.8.9. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that plate motion occurs as a consequence of convection in Earth's mantle. Plate tectonics is driven by convection in the mantle.
ES.8.10. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that there are two different types of crust - oceanic and continental - that have very different characteristics.
ES.8.11. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the five physiographic provinces of Virginia are Coastal Plain, Piedmont, Blue Ridge, Valley and Ridge, and Appalachian Plateau.
ES.8.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the Coastal Plain is a flat area underlain by young, unconsolidated sediments. These layers of sediment were produced by erosion of the Appalachian Mountains and then deposited on the Coastal Plain.
ES.8.13. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the Piedmont is an area of rolling hills underlain by mostly ancient igneous and metamorphic rocks. The igneous rocks are the roots of volcanoes formed during an ancient episode of subduction that occurred before the formation of the Appalachian Mountains.
ES.8.14. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the Blue Ridge is a high ridge separating the Piedmont from the Valley and Ridge Province. The billion-year-old igneous and metamorphic rocks of the Blue Ridge are the oldest in the state. Some metamorphism of these rocks occurred during the formation of the Appalachian Mountains.
ES.8.15. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the Valley and Ridge province is an area with long parallel ridges and valleys underlain by ancient folded and faulted sedimentary rocks. The folding and faulting of the sedimentary rocks occurred during a collision between Africa and North America. The collision, which occurred in the late Paleozoic era, produced the Appalachian Mountains.
ES.8.16. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the Appalachian Plateau has rugged, irregular topography and is underlain by ancient, flat-lying sedimentary rocks. The area is actually a series of plateaus separated by faults. Most of Virginia's coal resources are found in the plateau province.
ES.8.17. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to label on a map and recognize the major features of the physiographic provinces of Virginia.
ES.8.18. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that weathering is the process by which rocks are broken down chemically and physically by the action of water, air, and organisms.
ES.8.19. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that erosion is the process by which Earth materials are transported by moving water, ice, or wind.
ES.8.20. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that deposition is the process by which Earth materials carried by wind, water, or ice settle out and are deposited.
ES.8.21. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that earth consists of a solid, mostly iron inner core; a liquid, mostly iron outer core; a rocky, plastic mantle; and a rocky, brittle crust.
ES.8.22. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that relative plate motions and plate boundaries are convergent (subduction and continental collision), divergent (sea floor spreading), or transform.
ES.8.23. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that ocean crust is relatively thin, young, and dense.
ES.8.24. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that continental crust is relatively thick, old, and less dense.
ES.8.25. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that continental drift is a consequence of plate tectonics.
ES.8.26. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that hot spot volcanic activity, such as volcanic islands, is exceptional in that it is not related to plate boundaries.
ES.8.27. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that earthquake activity is associated with all plate boundaries.
ES.8.28. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that major features of convergent boundaries include collision zones (folded and thrust-faulted mountains) and subduction zones (volcanoes and trenches).
ES.8.29. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that major features of divergent boundaries include mid-ocean ridges, rift valleys, and fissure volcanoes.
ES.8.30. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that major features of transform boundaries include strike-slip faults.
ES.8.31. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that a fault is a break or crack in Earth's crust along which movement has occurred.
ES.8.32. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that most active faults are located at or near plate boundaries. Earthquakes result when movement occurs along a fault.
ES.8.33. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that when rocks are compressed horizontally, their layers may be deformed into wave-like forms called folds. This commonly occurs during continental collisions.
ES.8.34. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that a volcano is an opening where magma erupts onto Earth's surface. Most volcanic activity is associated with subduction, rifting, or sea floor spreading.
VA.ES.9. Earth Science: The student will investigate and understand how freshwater resources are influenced by geologic processes and the activities of humans. Key concepts include a) processes of soil development; b) development of Karst topography; c) identification of groundwater zones including water table, zone of saturation, and zone of aeration; d) identification of other sources of fresh water including rivers, springs, and aquifers with reference to the hydrologic cycle; e) dependence on freshwater resources and the effects of human usage on water quality; f) identification of the major watershed systems in Virginia including the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.
ES.9.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that soil is formed from the weathering of rocks and organic activity.
ES.9.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that Karst topography is developed in areas underlain by carbonate rocks, including limestone and dolomite.
ES.9.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that a substantial amount of water is stored in permeable soil and rock underground.
ES.9.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that earth's fresh water supply is finite.
ES.9.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that water is continuously being passed through the hydrologic cycle.
ES.9.6. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that fresh water is necessary for survival and most human activities.
ES.9.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that soil is loose rock fragments and clay derived from weathered rock mixed with organic material.
ES.9.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that Karst topography includes features like caves and sinkholes.
ES.9.15. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that Karst topography forms when limestone is slowly dissolved away by slightly acidic groundwater.
ES.9.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that where limestone is abundant in the Valley and Ridge province of Virginia, Karst topography is common.
ES.9.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that permeability is a measure of the ability of a rock or sediment to transmit water or other liquids.
ES.9.11. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that water does not pass through impermeable materials.
ES.9.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that geological processes, such as erosion, and human activities, such as waste disposal, can pollute water supplies.
ES.9.13. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the three major regional watershed systems in Virginia lead to the Chesapeake Bay, the North Carolina sounds, and the Gulf of Mexico.
ES.9.14. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to interpret a simple groundwater diagram showing the zone of aeration, the zone of saturation, the water table, and an aquifer.
ES.9.16. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to locate the major Virginia watershed systems on a map (Chesapeake Bay, Gulf of Mexico, and North Carolina sounds).
VA.ES.10. Earth Science: The student will investigate and understand that many aspects of the history and evolution of the Earth and life can be inferred by studying rocks and fossils. Key concepts include a) traces or remains of ancient, often extinct, life are preserved by various means in many sedimentary rocks; b) superposition, cross-cutting relationships, index fossils, and radioactive decay are methods of dating bodies of rock; c) absolute and relative dating have different applications but can be used together to determine the age of rocks and structures; d) rocks and fossils from many different geologic periods and epochs are found in Virginia.
ES.10.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that evidence of ancient, often extinct life is preserved in many sedimentary rocks.
ES.10.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that fossil evidence indicates that life forms have changed and become more complex over geologic time.
ES.10.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that earth is very ancient - about 4.6 billion years old.
ES.10.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the history of Earth and the ages of rocks can be investigated and understood by studying rocks and fossils.
ES.10.5. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that a fossil is the remains, impression, or other evidence preserved in rock of the former existence of life.
ES.10.6. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that some ways in which fossils can be preserved are molds, casts, and original bone or shell.
ES.10.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that nearly all fossils are found in sedimentary rocks.
ES.10.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that in Virginia, fossils are found mainly in the Coastal Plain, Valley and Ridge, and Appalachian Plateau provinces.
ES.10.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that most Virginia fossils are of marine organisms. This indicates that large areas of the state have been periodically covered by seawater.
ES.10.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic fossils are found in Virginia.
ES.10.11. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to describe how life has changed and become more complex over geologic time.
ES.10.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that relative time places events in a sequence without assigning any numerical ages.
ES.10.13. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that fossils, superposition, and crosscutting relations are used to determine the relative ages of rocks.
ES.10.14. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that absolute time places a numerical age on an event.
ES.10.15. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that radioactive decay is used to determine the absolute age of rocks.
ES.10.16. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to interpret a simple geologic history diagram, using superposition and crosscutting relations.
VA.ES.11. Earth Science: The student will investigate and understand that oceans are complex, interactive physical, chemical, and biological systems and are subject to long- and short-term variations. Key concepts include a) physical and chemical changes (tides, waves, currents, sea level and ice cap variations, upwelling, and salinity concentrations); b) importance of environmental and geologic implications; c) systems interactions (density differences, energy transfer, weather, and climate); d) features of the sea floor (continental margins, trenches, mid-ocean ridges, and abyssal plains) reflect tectonic processes; e) economic and public policy issues concerning the oceans and the coastal zone including the Chesapeake Bay.
ES.11.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the ocean is a dynamic system in which many chemical, biological, and physical changes are taking place.
ES.11.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the oceans are environmentally and economically important.
ES.11.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that human activities and public policy have important consequences for the oceans.
ES.11.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the oceans' resources are finite and should be utilized with care.
ES.11.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the impact of human activities, such as waste disposal, construction, and agriculture, affect the water quality within watershed systems and ultimately the ocean.
ES.11.6. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that convection is the major mechanism of energy transfer in the oceans, atmosphere, and Earth's interior.
ES.11.7. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the ocean is the single largest reservoir of heat at Earth's surface.
ES.11.8. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the topography of the seafloor is at least as variable as that on the continents.
ES.11.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that most waves on the ocean surface are generated by wind.
ES.11.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the tides are the daily, periodic rise and fall of water level caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and moon.
ES.11.11. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that there are large current systems in the oceans that carry warm water towards the poles and cold water towards the equator.
ES.11.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that sea level falls when glacial ice caps grow and rises when the ice caps melt.
ES.11.13. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that upwellings bring cold, nutrient-rich water from the deep ocean to the surface and are areas of rich biological activity.
ES.11.14. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that estuaries, like the Chesapeake Bay, are areas where fresh and salt water mix, producing variations in salinity and high biological activity.
ES.11.15. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that algae in the oceans are an important source of atmospheric oxygen.
ES.11.16. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the oceans are an important source of food and mineral resources as well as a venue for recreation and transportation.
ES.11.17. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that pollution and over-fishing can harm or deplete valuable resources.
ES.11.18. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that chemical pollution and sedimentation are great threats to the chemical and biological well-being of estuaries and oceans.
ES.11.19. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to identify the effects of human activities on the oceans.
ES.11.20. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the stored heat in the ocean drives much of Earth's weather.
ES.11.21. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the stored heat in the ocean causes climate near the ocean to be milder than climate in the interior of continents.
ES.11.22. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that features of the sea floor that are related to plate tectonic processes include mid-ocean ridges and trenches.
ES.11.23. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that other major topographic features of the oceans are continental shelves, continental slopes, abyssal plains, and seamounts.
VA.ES.12. Earth Science: The student will investigate and understand the origin and evolution of the atmosphere and the interrelationship of geologic processes, biologic processes, and human activities on its composition and dynamics. Key concepts include a) scientific evidence for atmospheric changes over geologic time; b) current theories related to the effects of early life on the chemical makeup of the atmosphere; c) comparison of the Earth's atmosphere to that of other planets; d) atmospheric regulation mechanisms including the effects of density differences and energy transfer; e) potential atmospheric compositional changes due to human, biologic, and geologic activity.
ES.12.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the composition of Earth's atmosphere has changed over geologic time.
ES.12.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that earth's atmosphere is unique in the solar system in that it contains substantial oxygen.
ES.12.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the composition of the atmosphere can change due to human, biologic, and geologic activity.
ES.12.4. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the early atmosphere contained little oxygen and more carbon dioxide than the modern atmosphere.
ES.12.5. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that early photosynthetic life such as cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) consumed carbon dioxide and generated oxygen.
ES.12.6. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that it was only after early photosynthetic life generated oxygen that animal life became possible.
ES.12.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that earth's atmosphere is 21 percent oxygen, 78 percent nitrogen, and 1 percent trace gases.
ES.12.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the atmosphere of Venus is mostly carbon dioxide and very dense.
ES.12.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the atmosphere of Mars is very thin and mostly carbon dioxide.
ES.12.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that human activities have increased the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere.
ES.12.11. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that man-made chemicals have decreased the ozone concentration in the upper atmosphere.
ES.12.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that volcanic activity and meteorite impacts can inject large quantities of dust and gases into the atmosphere.
ES.12.13. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the ability of Earth's atmosphere to absorb and retain heat is affected by the presence of gases like water vapor and carbon dioxide.
ES.12.14. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to explain how volcanic activity or meteor impacts could affect the atmosphere and life on Earth.
ES.12.15. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to explain how biologic activity, including human activities, may influence global temperature and climate.
VA.ES.13. Earth Science: The student will investigate and understand that energy transfer between the sun, Earth, and the Earth's atmosphere drives weather and climate on Earth. Key concepts include a) observation and collection of weather data; b) prediction of weather patterns; c) severe weather occurrences such as tornadoes, hurricanes, and major storms; d) weather phenomena and the factors that affect climate including radiation and convection.
ES.13.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that weather and climate are different.
ES.13.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that earth's surface is much more efficiently heated by the sun than is the atmosphere.
ES.13.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the amount of energy reaching any given point on Earth's surface is controlled by the angle of sunlight striking the surface and varies with the seasons.
ES.13.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that winds are created by uneven heat distribution at Earth's surface and modified by the rotation of Earth.
ES.13.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that energy transfer between Earth's surface and the atmosphere creates the weather.
ES.13.6. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that both weather and climate are measurable and, to a certain extent, predictable.
ES.13.7. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that convection is the major mechanism of energy transfer in the oceans, atmosphere, and Earth's interior.
ES.13.8. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that convection in the atmosphere is a major cause of weather.
ES.13.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that weather describes day-to-day changes in atmospheric conditions.
ES.13.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that climate describes the typical weather patterns for a given location over a period of many years.
ES.13.11. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that areas near the equator receive more of the sun's energy per unit area than areas nearer the poles.
ES.13.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the conditions necessary for cloud formation are air at or below dew point and presence of condensation nuclei. Cloud droplets can join together to form precipitation.
ES.13.13. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the four major factors affecting climate are latitude, elevation, proximity to bodies of water, and position relative to mountains.
ES.13.14. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the Coriolis effect causes deflections of the atmosphere due to the rotation of Earth. Global wind patterns result from the uneven heating of Earth by the sun and are influenced by the Coriolis effect.
ES.13.15. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that earth's major climatic zones are the polar, temperate, and tropical zones.
ES.13.16. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that a tornado is a narrow, violent funnel-shaped column of spiral winds that extends downward from the cloud base toward Earth.
ES.13.17. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that a hurricane is a tropical cyclone (counterclockwise movement of air) characterized by sustained winds of 120 kilometers per hour (75 miles per hour) or greater.
ES.13.18. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to label a diagram of global wind patterns.
ES.13.19. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to read and interpret data from a thermometer, a barometer, and a psychrometer.
ES.13.20. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to read and interpret a weather map.
ES.13.21. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to predict weather based on cloud type, temperature, and barometric pressure.
VA.ES.14. Earth Science: The student will investigate and understand scientific concepts related to the origin and evolution of the universe. Key concepts include a) nebulae; b) the origin of stars and star systems; c) stellar evolution; d) galaxies; e) cosmology (the Big Bang).
ES.14.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the universe is vast and very old.
ES.14.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the big bang theory is our best current model for the origin of the universe.
ES.14.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the solar nebular theory is our best current idea for the origin of the solar system.
ES.14.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that stars have a finite lifetime and evolve over time.
ES.14.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the mass of a star controls its evolution, length of its lifetime, and ultimate fate.
ES.14.6. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the big bang theory states that the universe began in a very hot, dense state that expanded and eventually condensed into galaxies.
ES.14.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the solar nebular theory explains that the planets formed through the condensing of the solar nebula.
ES.14.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that stars form by condensation of interstellar gas.
ES.14.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram illustrates the relationship between the absolute magnitude and the surface temperature of stars. As stars evolve, their position on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram moves.
ES.14.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that galaxies are collections of billions of stars. The basic types of galaxies are spiral, elliptical, and irregular.
ES.14.11. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the solar system is located in the Milky Way galaxy.
ES.14.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that a light-year is the distance light travels in one year and is the most commonly used measurement for distance in astronomy.
ES.14.13. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that much of our information about our galaxy and the universe comes from ground-based observations.
VA.ES. Earth Science
ES.1. The student will plan and conduct investigations in which
ES.1.a) Volume, area, mass, elapsed time, direction, temperature, pressure, distance, density, and changes in elevation/depth are calculated utilizing the most appropriate tools;
ES.1.b) Technologies including computers, probeware, and global positioning systems (GPS), are used to collect, analyze, and report data and to demonstrate concepts and simulate experimental conditions;
ES.1.c) Scales, diagrams, maps, charts, graphs, tables, and profiles are constructed and interpreted;
ES.2. The student will demonstrate scientific reasoning and logic by
ES.2.e) Evaluating evidence for scientific theories.
ES.3. The student will investigate and understand how to read and interpret maps, globes, models, charts, and imagery. Key concepts include
ES.3.a) Maps (bathymetric, geologic, topographic, and weather) and star charts;
ES.3.b) Imagery (aerial photography and satellite images);
ES.3.c) Direction and measurements of distance on any map or globe; and
ES.4. The student will investigate and understand the characteristics of the Earth and the solar system. Key concepts include
ES.4.a) Position of the Earth in the solar system;
ES.4.b) Sun-Earth-moon relationships (seasons, tides, and eclipses);
ES.4.c) Characteristics of the sun, planets and their moons, comets, meteors, and asteroids; and
ES.4.d) The history and contributions of the space program.
ES.7. The student will investigate and understand the differences between renewable and nonrenewable resources. Key concepts include
ES.7.a) Fossil fuels, minerals, rocks, water, and vegetation;
ES.7.b) Advantages and disadvantages of various energy sources;
ES.7.c) Resources found in Virginia;
ES.7.d) Making informed judgments related to resource use and its effects on Earth systems; and
ES.7.e) Environmental costs and benefits.
ES.8. The student will investigate and understand geologic processes including plate tectonics. Key concepts include
ES.8.b) Processes (faulting, folding, volcanism, metamorphism, weathering, erosion, deposition, and sedimentation) and their resulting features; and
ES.10. The student will investigate and understand that many aspects of the history and evolution of the Earth and life can be inferred by studying rocks and fossils. Key concepts include
ES.10.a) Traces and remains of ancient, often extinct, life are preserved by various means in many sedimentary rocks;
ES.10.b) Superposition, cross-cutting relationships, index fossils, and radioactive decay are methods of dating bodies of rock;
ES.10.c) Absolute and relative dating have different applications but can be used together to determine the age of rocks and structures; and
ES.10.d) Rocks and fossils from many different geologic periods and epochs are found in Virginia.
ES.11. The student will investigate and understand that oceans are complex, interactive physical, chemical, and biological systems and are subject to long- and short-term variations. Key concepts include
ES.11.a) Physical and chemical changes (tides, waves, currents, sea level and ice cap variations, upwelling, and salinity variations);
ES.11.b) Importance of environmental and geologic implications;
ES.11.c) systems interactions (density differences, energy transfer, weather, and climate);
ES.11.e) Economic and public policy issues concerning the oceans and the coastal zone including the Chesapeake Bay.
ES.12. The student will investigate and understand the origin and evolution of the atmosphere and the interrelationship of geologic processes, biologic processes, and human activities on its composition and dynamics. Key concepts include
ES.12.a) Scientific evidence for atmospheric changes over geologic time;
ES.12.b) Current theories related to the effects of early life on the chemical makeup of the atmosphere;
ES.12.c) Comparison of the Earth's atmosphere to that of other planets;
ES.12.e) Potential atmospheric compositional changes due to human, biologic, and geologic activity.
ES.13. The student will investigate and understand that energy transfer between the sun and the Earth and its atmosphere drives weather and climate on Earth. Key concepts include
ES.13.b) Prediction of weather patterns;
ES.13.c) Severe weather occurrences, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, and major storms; and
ES.13.d) Weather phenomena and the factors that affect climate including radiation and convection.
ES.14. The student will investigate and understand scientific concepts related to the origin and evolution of the universe. Key concepts include
ES.14.a) Nebulae;
ES.14.b) The origin of stars and star systems;
ES.14.c) Stellar evolution;
ES.14.d) Galaxies; and
ES.14.e) Cosmology including the big bang theory.