In Grade 4, the study of science includes planning and implementing field and laboratory investigations using scientific methods, analyzing information, making informed decisions, and using tools such as compasses to collect information. Students also use computers and information technology tools to support scientific investigations. In addition, students identify the physical properties of matter and observe the addition or reduction of heat as an example of what can cause changes in states of matter. Students learn the roles of living and nonliving components of simple systems and investigate differences between learned characteristics and inherited traits. They learn that adaptations of organisms that lived in the past may have increased some species' ability to survive.
Science is a way of learning about the natural world.
Students should know how science has built a vast body of changing and increasing knowledge described by physical, mathematical, and conceptual models, and also should know that science may not answer all questions. A system is a collection of cycles, structures, and processes that interact. Students should understand a whole in terms of its components and how these components relate to each other and to the whole. All systems have basic properties that can be described in terms of space, time, energy, and matter. Change and constancy occur in systems and can be observed and measured as patterns.