Cereal City Science - Ready for the Next Generation!

Science Units

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Diverse group of children playing outdoors in different seasons and types of weather.

KENG - Weather and Climate

Anchor Phenomenon: The story, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

Driving Question: Can we observe the weather and find patterns to use to make predictions?

Engineering Design Challenge: Students design, analyze, and build a weather station that will relate data for temperature, precipitation, and wind direction and strength to collect data and determine patterns.

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Illustration of three students on a playground. One student is sitting on a tree stump and writing in a journal. The other students are crawling on the ground and looking at insects that are on the ground. There is a slide and seesaw in the background.

KLNG - Plants and Animals Live Here

Anchor Phenomenon: Pill bugs gather under potato peels when left out overnight.

Driving Question: How do the potato peels help the pill bug to survive?

Engineering Design Challenge: Make a plan to determine how to reduce the impact of humans on the land, water, air, and living things in a local environment.

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Two children, one pushing and one pulling an elephant in a wagon up a steep hill. There is a neighborhood in the background.

KPNG - Motion: Pushes and Pulls

Anchor Phenomenon: A rolling ball changes direction and motion when it collides with a barrier.

Driving Question: How can we design a game that makes a ball travel from start to finish and change direction on its path?

Engineering Design Challenge: Design and build an “A-mazing Game” to make a ball travel to a specific ending point and change direction as it travels.

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Split illustration of two children sitting on a lawn looking at the sky. On the left side, they're looking at a blue sky with clouds. On the right side, they're looking at a night sky with a full moon and stars.

1ENG - Space Systems: Patterns and Cycles

Anchor Phenomenon: Changes in the daytime and nighttime sky.

Driving Question: How does the daytime and nighttime sky change each day and throughout the year?

Engineering Design Challenge: Students design, analyze, and build a sundial to track the apparent movement of the sun across the sky.

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Illustration of a dad and his two daughters. They are looking at sand and shells on a beach.

1LNG - Plant and Animal Traits

Anchor Phenomenon: Some fiddler crabs have two small claws and some fiddler crabs have one small claw and one large claw.

Driving Question: How do the fiddler crab characteristics help it to survive?

Engineering Design Challenge: Students use materials to construct a device that mimics plants or animals that solves a human problem.

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Illustration of a treehouse in a yard. There is a child climbing a ladder up to the treehouse, while his sister watches him from the ground.

1PNG - Waves: Light and Sound

Anchor Phenomenon: We cannot see images in the tree house without light.

Driving Question: What is the best placement of windows to allow light into the tree house?

Engineering Design Challenge: Student engineer teams must design and build a model of a treehouse that uses the sun and available street lights to provide the right amount of lighting for the activities that they want to do in their treehouses.

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Illustration of a boy pointing to three circles surrounding a fourth center circle. The center circle has an image of Earth with North America in the center. Circle one has a river with a small waterfall. Circle two has a lake with a mountain in the background. Circle three has a beach with sand dunes.

2ENG - Changing Earth: Today and Over Time

Anchor Phenomena: The school yard has evidence of changes in the land from rain, water, wind and human activity.

Driving Question: How does the shape of the land change and how are different shapes in the land and bodies of water formed?

Engineering Design Challenge: Develop and use models of landforms to explain how land can change rapidly or gradually over a long period of time.

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Illustration of a bee on a yellow flower as viewed through a magnifying lens.

2LNG - Plant and Animal Relationships

Anchor Phenomenon: Whirligig Beetle Video.

Driving Question: Where do whirligigs live and do they live with other plants and animals? (Where do plants and animals live and how do they interact?)

Engineering Design Challenge: Design and develop an artificial pollinator.

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Illustration of a confused boy standing in a backyard. He has a box of stuff sitting next to him and he is holding a fork, but the things aren't made of what he expected them to be made of. The fork is feathers, the pillow is metal, there's a t-shirt that's wood, and a baseball bat made of cotton. What's going on?

2PNG - Solving Problems with Properties

Anchor Phenomenon: When the properties of objects change, the usefulness of the object changes: A metal pillow is not useful, a shirt made of wood is not useful.

Driving Question: What properties make things useful for their intended purpose?

Engineering Design Challenge: Student engineer teams are challenged with using their understanding of properties of materials to design a structure that will remain standing during a rain and wind storm. Their structure must also keep a figure placed inside the structure dry.

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Illustration of surrounding a fourth center circle. The center circle has an image of Earth showing eastern parts of North America, South America, and the western side of Africa. The surrounding circles have diverse groups of children. Circle one has two children and a small dog playing in fall leaves. Circle two has two children standing on a snowy field with a mountain and the Aurora Borealis in the background. Circle three has two children on a beach with palm trees and ocean in the background. One child is holding a surf board.

3ENG - Weather, Climate, and Natural Hazards

Anchor Phenomenon: The weather differs on the same day, at the same time of day, at different locations around the world.

Driving Question: Why do weather conditions differ on the same day in different regions of the world?

Engineering Design Challenge: Develop a model to reduce the impact of a weather related event on human-made or natural structures.

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Illustration of a green frog on a reed. The frog's throat is inflated to show that it is making a croaking noise.

3LNG - Life Cycles and Survival in an Ecosystem

Anchor Phenomenon: The pond is noisy with different animal sounds at night.

Driving Question: Why are the frogs so noisy and loud at the pond?

Engineering Design Challenge: Design and construct a model to demonstrate how problems in populations occur when the environment changes. Determine the merit of a possible solution to the problem.

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Illustration of two children watching an electric toy firetruck run under a chair. The firetruck has lights and it is carrying an oatmeal raisin cookie.

3PNG - Forces and Interactions

Engineering Problem: Fire Truck Express. Student engineer teams must figure out a way to have the “Fire Truck” (battery powered constant velocity cart) go from the playroom to the kitchen to pick up a load of cookies from mom and return to the playroom.

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Child in a wheelchair pointing to a globe surrounded by circles that represent Earth's layers, glaciers, and cave formations

4ENG - Processes That Shape the Earth

Anchor Phenomenon: The Grand Canyon appears to have been carved out of the Earth. The land has many different shapes and features.

Driving Question: How does the surface of the Earth change? What made the Grand Canyon so deep and wide?

Engineering Design Challenge: Generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impact of weathering and erosion on humans.

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Illustration of a rabbit in a forest. There is a puma ready to pounce on the rabbit from its position on some rocks.

4LNG - Structure, Function, and Information Processing

Anchor Phenomenon: When going from a bright sunny day outside to the inside of the house, the house seems dark inside and it is hard to see.

Driving Question: How does light affect how we see objects?

Anchor Phenomenon: On one flower, two boys observe many different animals that make the flower their habitat.

Driving Question: How does the stink bug and other animals survive in their habitats?

Engineering Design Challenge: Design and construct a model to demonstrate how an organism’s senses are used to process information for the survival of the organism.

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Illustration of a Rube Goldberg device.

4PNG - Energy and Waves

Engineering Problem: Student engineer teams take on the challenge to design and build a Rube Goldberg device that they can use to demonstrate and explain how energy moves from place to place?

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Globe surrounded by four circles that represent the biosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, and atmosphere.

5ENG - Earth and Space Systems

Anchor Phenomenon: There is a floating island of plastic in the ocean.

Driving Question: What is the effect of humans on the land, air, water, and living things? What can a 5th grader do to reduce their impact on the land, water, air, and living things?

Engineering Design Challenge: Develop a solution to reduce the effect of agriculture, industry, and everyday life on land, vegetation, air, and bodies of water.

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Illustration of a hippo with a bird on its back. They are standing in front of a lake and we can see the tops of three more hippos peeping out of the water.

5LNG - Matter and Energy in an Ecosystem

Anchor Phenomenon: Oxpecker and Hippo Video.

Driving Question: What is the relationship between the oxpecker and the hippo? or What is the relationship between different living and nonliving things in the African lakes and river ecosystem?

Engineering Design Challenge: Develop a plan to reduce the impact of humans on the energy flow in an ecosystem.

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Illustration of a happy cartoon skunk walking through a neighborhood. There is an odor in a green cloud eminating from the skunk.

5PNG - Structure and Properties of Matter

Anchor Phenomenon: “Where’s the Skunk?” Students observe the skunk odor in the neighborhood. Some students detect a strong odor, some a weak odor, and some no odor. How can they use their data to locate the skunk?

Driving Question: (1) Student engineering teams are challenged to design a device to separate salt water into salt and water. (2) Student engineering teams are challenged to design a device that will keep a frozen ice cream treat frozen for 40 minutes.

Engineering Design Challenge: Students explore the structure, properties, and behavior of matter through investigations into the skunk odor. They are given the opportunity to solve real problems as they learn about matter.

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Illustration of two children playing bubble soccer. There is a soccer ball on the field. One student bounced of the other student and is going to fall.

MSPNG1 - Forces: Contact and Non-Contact

Anchor Phenomenon: While playing in a Bubble Soccer game there are many collisions between players. When other players collide with Charlene, she gets knocked off her feet, and sent flying off the field.

Driving Question: What is causing Charlene to get sent off her feet and sent in a different direction after she collides with other soccer players?

Anchor Phenomenon: Floating pencil device.

Driving Question: What forces are causing the pencil to be suspended above the pencil holder?

Engineering Design Challenge: Students apply an engineering practice and concept to solve a problem caused when objects collide.

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Illustration of a girl holding her nose. Her closet is in the background and her gym bag is eminating a strong odor that's indicated by a green cloud.

MSPNG2 - Particles of Matter and Chemical Reactions

Anchor Phenomenon: Something Stinks in Here! View Phenomenon Cartoon

Driving Question: What causes the odor of the stinky socks in the gym bag to fill the room?

Anchor Phenomenon: Mom has to stop and fill her gas tank of her car every week.

Driving Question: Where does the gasoline go? What happened to the gasoline in the tank?

Engineering Design Challenge: Students dive into reactions that are exothermic and endothermic and, using what they have learned, design a device to keep water in an aquarium warm enough that animals can survive.

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Illustration two boys riding on a roller coaster.

MSPNG3 - Energy and the Electromagnetic Spectrum

Engineering Problem: Design a model of a roller coaster that explains the transfer of potential and kinetic energy.

Anchor Phenomenon: When grasping the bulb of the hand boiler, the liquid in the device begins to bubble and boil.

Driving Question: How does wrapping our hand around the hand boiler make the liquid bubble and move up the corkscrew tubing? How can we use our understanding of energy and matter to explain the phenomenon?

Engineering Design Challenge: Students design and build a solar oven.

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Illustration of the Earth's three layers (the core, mantle, and crust). On the outer layer we can see mountains and an active volcanoe.

MSENG1 - History of Earth

Anchor Phenomenon: Earthquakes in San Francisco and more recently in Puerto Rico.

Driving Question: Why do earthquakes occur?

Engineering Design Challenge: Students plan, design, and build a model of a seismograph.

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Illustration a large group of sandhill cranes. Some of the cranes are flying and some are wading in a lake. There is a fall forest in the background.

MSENG2 - Weather, Climate, and Human Impact

Anchor Phenomenon: In 2014 the people of North Carolina experience an outbreak of ten tornadoes in one storm.

Driving Question: What causes an outbreak of tornadoes, severe weather, and day to day weather?

Anchor Phenomenon: The Audubon Society has presented data the shows a change in bird migration due to climate change.

Driving Question: What is the relationship between bird migration and climate? What is causing the birds to change their migration?

Engineering Design Challenge: Student engineer teams develop a working model that demonstrates the water cycle. Using observations, students evaluate the effectiveness of their models in demonstrating the water cycle.

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Illustration in two parts. One half a desert with a large crack running through it. The other half is of Earth and the Moon in space.

MSENG3 - Interactions Among Earth and Space Systems

Anchor Phenomenon: Earth Systems: Large cracks are forming in the Arizona desert where large quantities of water are being drawn to the surface for irrigation.

Driving Question: Earth Systems: What is the effect of drawing large quantities of water from groundwater for irrigating a desert? Are we running out of water? Are we running out of stuff?

Anchor Phenomenon: Space Systems: Surfers ride large waves called tidal bores against the river current. Stars appear to shoot across the sky.

Driving Question: Space Systems: What causes the tidal bores to occur and how do they move against the flow of the river? What causes “shooting stars”?

Engineering Design Challenge: Earth Systems: Design and build a model of the effect of drawing water from groundwater. Engage in a Geo-Inquiry activity that explores the water source in their community.

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Illustration wolves and a moose in a forest.

MSLNG1 - Stability and Change in an Ecosystem

Anchor Phenomenon: Fluctuations in the wolf and moose populations on Isle Royale, Michigan.

Driving Question: How do the roles and interactions of living and nonliving things contribute to the stability and change of an ecosystem?

Engineering Design Challenge: Make observations of diverse organisms to develop a classroom model woodland ecosystem.

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