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  • 2nd Grade

    Matter and Its Interactions

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

Performance Expectations

  1. Plan and conduct an investigation to describe and classify different kinds of materials by their observable properties. 2-PS1-1

    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

  • W.2.7 - Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g., read a number of books on a single topic to produce a report; record science observations). (2-PS1-1)
  • W.2.8 - Recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question. (2-PS1-1)

Mathematics

  • 2.MD.D.10 - Draw a picture graph and a bar graph (with single-unit scale) to represent a data set with up to four categories. Solve simple put-together, take-apart, and compare problems using information presented in a bar graph. (2-PS1-1)
  • MP.4 - Model with mathematics. (2-PS1-1)

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.
  • Picture Stem Designing Toy Box Organizers

    In this comprehensive STEM unit that utilizes science, math, technology, and language arts in 13-15 classroom sessions, students investigate standard units of measure and sort and classify objects according to their physical properties before applyin ...

  • Will It Bend?

    Students test the flexibility of different materials and construct explanations through the evidence they gather as they test the materials.

  • Robots Everywhere

    This is a 5E lesson plan from the book Picture Perfect STEM Lessons, K-2 Using Children's Books to Inspire STEM Learning by Emily Morgan and Karen Ansberry. The books Beep! Beep! Go to Sleep! by Todd Tarpley and National Geographic Kids: Robots b ...

  • Properties of Materials - in SlideShare

    This quick and succint powerpoint slide presentation is useful for teachers.  It provides a quick, background overview for teachers and students on the properties of materials.

  • Physical Science For Children All About Properties

    This short 20 minute video is well-done and engaging for young students in the 2nd grade. The video uses a well paced voice-over, interesting images, highlights vocabulary, and recaps of "what we learned so far". It starts out with &qu ...

  • Identifying Your Soil

    This activity involves students collecting, feeling, and describing different types of soil from a known location based on properties. The students are guideded to learn that soil can have different properties depending on the different material ...

  • Observable Properties of Matter

    This lesson allows students to collect data and sort objects according to their observable properties such as texture, color, weight, size, and temperature with direct instruction and in cooperative groups. The lesson includes many instructional ...

  • Matter song a music video by untamed Science

    This is an engaging music video that defines and gives examples of matter.The video is fun, colorful and explores many different kinds of matter as part of the music video sequence. Young students will love the song and the intera ...

  • The Slo Mo Guys: You Tube Videos

    None of these boxes quite fit what this resource is: It is a number of short videos of objects hitting other objects in extremely slow motion. Liquids hitting liquids, solids hitting solids, and all other combinations. Personal teaching favorites are ...

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