What does a student learn in StateMississippi,GradeGrade 3,SubjectScience?

Plants have structures inside and outside their bodies that each do a specific job. Students look at real examples to explain how roots pull in water, leaves catch sunlight, and thorns keep animals away.

Students learn how animals use physical features or behaviors, like hibernating through winter or migrating to warmer places, to survive when food runs low or temperatures become extreme.

Students learn how living things make more of their own kind and how traits like eye color or leaf shape get passed from parents to offspring.

Plants and animals pass physical traits to their offspring through reproduction. Those traits come from the parents, but things like sunlight, water, and temperature can also shape how an offspring looks or grows.

Traits are features like eye color, leaf shape, or fur pattern that parents pass to their young. Students look at plants and animals to see which traits offspring share with their parents.

Some plants and animals can reproduce alone, without a partner. Offspring from a single parent are exact copies, meaning they look and act just like the parent with no differences.

Kittens get some traits from each parent cat. Students learn that young animals and plants inherit a mix of features from both parents, not just one.

Plants and animals inherit traits from both parents, and those traits vary from one individual to the next. Students gather and share evidence showing why offspring in the same group look similar but not identical.

A plant that doesn't get enough water may grow shorter than it should, and an arctic fox's fur changes color with the seasons. Students study how surroundings can shape the traits an animal or plant shows, even if its genes stay the same.

Students study how different plants and animals are built for the places they live. A duck's webbed feet, a cactus's thick stem, and a polar bear's thick fur are all examples of adaptations.

Animals have physical features and behaviors that help them survive. Students learn how those traits, like a duck's webbed feet or a bear's winter sleep, help animals find food, stay safe, and live in their habitat.

Students read about real places where habitats changed, such as a forest after a wildfire or a pond after a beaver builds a dam, and explain whether those changes helped or hurt the animals living there.

Students predict how changes to a habitat, like a drought or new construction, push animals to hibernate, migrate, or die out. They practice asking questions about why some species survive a change while others don't.

Small differences between animals or plants of the same kind can help some survive longer or have more offspring. Students look at data to figure out which traits, like sharper thorns or better camouflage, give certain individuals an edge.

Students pick a real problem, like animals losing habitat or plants disappearing from an area, and design a solution to fix it. Then they test and improve that solution the way an engineer would.

Fossils are clues about what the world looked like millions of years ago. Students study plant and animal fossils to figure out what an ancient place was like, such as whether land that is now dry was once covered by ocean.

Students learn that matter is made of smaller building blocks and that mixing or changing materials can create something new with different properties.

Heating or cooling changes what matter looks like and how it acts. Students learn why ice melts into water, water boils into steam, and steam cools back into liquid, all because of how much heat is present.

Students heat up and cool down everyday materials like water or butter to watch them melt, freeze, or boil. They plan the experiment themselves and record what changes they see.

Matter is made of tiny moving particles too small to see. Students build or draw models to show how those invisible particles explain everyday things, like why a balloon holds its shape or why dust floats in the air.

Students heat and cool simple materials, like water or butter, and watch how fast the tiny particles inside move depending on the temperature.

Students study how objects move, what makes them speed up or slow down, and how energy plays a role in pushing and pulling things around them.

Magnets pull some objects closer and push others away. Students learn how pushing, pulling, and rough surfaces change the way objects move.

Pushing or pulling an object harder makes it move faster or farther. Students compare what happens when forces like gravity or magnets act in different directions or with different strengths on the same object.

Students plan an experiment to test how a force like gravity or friction changes the way an object moves. They choose what to test, predict what will happen, and carry out the investigation.

Students research how magnets are used in everyday objects, like cabinet latches, refrigerator doors, and speakers, then explain what they found in writing or a presentation.

Students identify a real problem and use what they know about magnets to solve it. They design, build, and test a simple tool or fix, then adjust it until it works better.

Students learn how Earth is layered beneath the surface and how rocks, fossils, and landforms hold clues about what the planet looked like long ago.

Rocks form, break down, and form again in a slow, repeating cycle. Students learn how rock layers stack up over time and how plants or animals can become fossils preserved inside those layers.

Students conduct simple experiments to learn how igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks form, then practice the hands-on tests geologists use to tell those rocks apart.

Students build models to show how rock layers form on top of each other over time, then explain how those layers can crack and shift.

Students study why fossils form inside certain rocks and not others. They learn to ask questions they can actually test, like why shell fossils appear in one layer of rock but bone fossils appear in another.

Rocks, soil, and water make up Earth's surface, and forces like wind, water, and volcanoes slowly reshape it. Students learn to identify what Earth is made of and explain how landforms change over time.

Students learn the four main layers inside Earth (crust, mantle, outer core, inner core) and what each one is made of. They read or research to find that information, then explain how the layers differ.

Students learn to recognize and sort major landforms like volcanoes, mountains, valleys, canyons, plains, and islands. They use drawings or models to show what each one looks like and explain what makes it different from the others.

Weathering breaks rock apart, erosion carries the pieces away, and deposition drops them somewhere new. Together, these three processes slowly reshape the land into features like canyons, arches, and bluffs.

Students sort Earth-changing events into two groups: ones that build up land (like volcanoes adding new rock) and ones that break it down (like rivers washing soil away). They explain how each process shapes the ground beneath us.

Students learn how Earth's land, water, air, and weather work together as connected systems that follow repeating patterns over time, like seasons changing or water moving between clouds and the ground.

The ground, water, air, and living things all push and pull on each other. Students learn how those interactions shape the soil, rocks, and landscapes we see every day.

Develop models to communicate the characteristics of the Earth's major systems, including the geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere (e.g., digital models, illustrations, flip books, diagrams, charts, tables).

Construct explanations of how different landforms and surface features result from the location and movement of water on Earth's surface (e.g., watersheds, drainage basins, deltas, or rivers).

Use graphical representations to communicate the distribution of freshwater and saltwater on Earth (e.g., oceans, lakes, rivers, glaciers, groundwater, or polar ice caps).

Earth's Resources

Students will demonstrate an understanding that all materials, energy, and fuels that humans use are derived from natural sources.

Identify some of Earth's resources that are used in everyday life such as water, wind, soil, forests, oil, natural gas, and minerals and classify as renewable or nonrenewable.

Obtain and communicate information to exemplify how humans attain, use, and protect renewable and nonrenewable Earth resources.

Use maps and historical information to identify natural resources in the state connecting (a) how resources are used for human needs and (b) how the use of those resources impacts the environment.

Design a process for cleaning a polluted environment (e.g., simulating an oil spill in the ocean or a flood in a city and creating a solution for containment and/or cleanup). Use an engineering design process to define the problem, design, construct, evaluate, and improve the environment.