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  • 2nd Grade

    Earth's Systems

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

Performance Expectations

  1. Develop a model to represent the shapes and kinds of land and bodies of water in an area. 2-ESS2-2

    Clarification Statement and Assessment Boundary

A Peformance Expectation (PE) is what a student should be able to do to show mastery of a concept. Some PEs include a Clarification Statement and/or an Assessment Boundary. These can be found by clicking the PE for "More Info." By hovering over a PE, its corresponding pieces from the Science and Engineering Practices, Disciplinary Core Ideas, and Crosscutting Concepts will be highlighted.

Science and Engineering Practices

Disciplinary Core Ideas

Crosscutting Concepts

By clicking on a specific Science and Engineering Practice, Disciplinary Core Idea, or Crosscutting Concept, you can find out more information on it. By hovering over one you can find its corresponding elements in the PEs.

Planning Curriculum

Common Core State Standards Connections

ELA/Literacy

  • SL.2.5 - Create audio recordings of stories or poems; add drawings or other visual displays to stories or recounts of experiences when appropriate to clarify ideas, thoughts, and feelings. (2-ESS2-2)

Mathematics

  • 2.NBT.A.3 - Read and write numbers to 1000 using base-ten numerals, number names, and expanded form. (2-ESS2-2)
  • MP.2 - Reason abstractly and quantitatively. (2-ESS2-2)
  • MP.4 - Model with mathematics. (2-ESS2-2)

Model Course Mapping

First Time Visitors

Resources & Lesson Plans

  • More resources added each week!
    A team of teacher curators is working to find, review, and vet online resources that support the standards. Check back often, as NSTA continues to add more targeted resources.
  • Build a Watershed PBS

    This 60 minute activity involves students building a physical model of a watershed and then making observations about how rain water travels over the land, eventually forming rivers and lakes. As an extension, the students take a bucket of water and ...

  • Mapping Landforms and Water bodies

    This student activity is a part of a larger unit teachers can use to thoroughly cover this topic, but can easily be used as a stand-alone activity. Students manipulate computer controls to move through simulated landforms in order to v ...

  • Making a Landform Model

    For this lesson, the students first explore the concept of making models by using home-made dough to create landforms.  How and why people use models are then explained.  Then the children create their own model island from t ...

  • Creating a Landform Yakit

    In this lesson, students take information learned about landforms and make a short, creative and entertaining presentation using an App called Yakit to tell their classmates about their research. This lesson is the 4th of 10 in a unit on water a ...

  • Planning a Landform Model

    This is lesson 8 in a series of lessons that cover landforms and bodies of water.  In this lesson, students will design and create a model of their own island that includes several types of landforms and bodies of water. &nbs ...

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Planning Curriculum gives connections to other areas of study for easier curriculum creation.