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  • 3rd Grade

    Earth and Human Activity

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

Performance Expectations

  1. Make a claim about the merit of a design solution that reduces the impacts of a weather-related hazard. 3-ESS3-1

    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

  • RI.3.1 - Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers. (3-ESS3-1)
  • W.3.1 - Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons. (3-ESS3-1)
  • W.3.7 - Conduct short research projects that build knowledge about a topic. (3-ESS3-1)

Mathematics

  • MP.2 - Reason abstractly and quantitatively. (3-ESS3-1)
  • MP.4 - Model with mathematics. (3-ESS3-1)

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.
  • Tornado!

    There are four associated activities in this lesson (which is lesson 8 in a unit on natural disasters). In the first three activities, students learn about tornadoes, the damage they cause, and how engineers consider strong winds in their design of s ...

  • Are Our Homes Built for Severe Weather?

    In this unit, students investigate five essential questions about severe weather: "What is severe weather? How does weather impact people's lives? How can technology be used to collect data about weather conditions? What can weather data tel ...

  • Protecting Our City With Levees

    In 2005 Hurricane Katrina caused severe damage and suffering to the people who lived in New Orleans. The levees that surrounded the city did not hold the immense amount of ocean water that rose from the storm.  In this activity, students wi ...

  • Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Phenomenon)

    This one and half minute silent video shows the phenomenon of the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge located in Washington state.  The bridge opened to traffic on July 1, 1940 and collapsed only four months later on November 7, ...

  • Severe Weather Crash Course Kids #28.2

    This brief video from Crash Course Kids introduces students to severe weather. It explains that severe weather is more extreme than normal daily weather conditions.  There is a brief description of th ...

  • Wacky Weather (Severe Weather Engineering Unit)

    This article outlines how student groups use multiple sources of information to learn about their assigned weather hazard: hurricanes, tornadoes, or thunderstorms. They then engage in the engineering design process, building ...

  • Waterproof The Roof

    In this engineering activity, students are challenged to design and construct a roof that will protect a cardboard house from getting wet.   The criteria and constraints for the design is that students need to develop a roofing system ...

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