THE INTERMEDIATE GRADES SCIENCE – FOURTH THROUGH SIXTH GRADES Many American schools don’t teach enough science in grades four to six. “Students come to junior high with poor and varied backgrounds,” explains one science teacher. “You spend so much time catching up on the basics, you can’t always cover what is expected.” In order to avoid problems later, the school must teach the fundamentals now. At this stage, students should continue to encounter a mix of physical, life, and earth sciences. Now their studies go a bit deeper. For example, children in grades K-3 should have learned about how plants grow, what they need to survive, and what main structures like roots, stems, and leaves do. Students in grades four to six are ready for a basic introduction to photosynthesis. They also study plant anatomy in more detail, learning about stamens and pistils and such. You’ll probably see some review of subjects introduced in earlier grades as students move to deeper levels of understanding. You should notice other signs of increasing sophistication. Teachers work on bringing greater organization to children’s knowledge. For example, students learn about the five kingdoms of living things, and that scientists have organized the earth’s geologic...
FOURTH GRADE
Fourth grade students’ experiments grow more sophisticated than in the primary school years. With guidance from the teacher, their observations become more systematic; their predictions, hypotheses, and analyses grow more detailed. For example, teac...
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FIFTH GRADE
Fifth grade classwork continues training youngsters to conduct investigations. They get practice using the proper instruments to run their experiments. They look closely at the evidence they gather and use it to form conclusions. Children put math lessons...
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SIXTH GRADE
Sixth grade students, by the end of the year, should be competent at setting up and conducting simple experiments. They practice collecting, recording, analyzing, and reporting their data; stating clear hypotheses; and testing the validity of predictions....
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IS YOUR SCHOOL TEACHING SCIENCE ...
Here are examples of science lessons that well-educated children have learned by about the time they finish the intermediate grades. By the end of sixth grade, your child should understand many of these terms, facts, and concepts. An object that lets ligh...
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QUESTIONS TO ASK THE TEACHER
In the intermediate grades, you may want to ask your child’s teacher questions such as: Will he get a thorough mix of life sciences, physical sciences, and earth sciences this year and next? ‘ What sorts of experiments and hands-on investigati...
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