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Bullitt County Public Schools |
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Science Core Content 4.1 / POS |
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Science Core Content 4.1 / POS - Addendums |
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Preface
Introduction Core Content for Science Assessment
What is the Core Content for Science Assessment?
The Core Content for Science Assessment represents the content from Kentucky's Academic Expectations and Program of Studies that is essential for all students to know and the content that is fair game to assess on Kentucky's state assessment. It captures the "big ideas" of the content area. Version 4.0 Core Content for Science Assessment and the Academic Expectations provide the parameters for test developers as they design the state assessment items. These content standards and expectations provide focus for the development of the 2007 Kentucky Core Content Test (KCCT).
The Core Content for Science Assessment is not intended to represent the comprehensive local curriculum for science assessment and instruction. It is also not the comprehensive Program of Studies for Science, which specifies the minimum content for the required credits for high school graduation, and the primary, intermediate and middle level programs leading to these requirements.
Kentucky Academic Expectations for Science
The Kentucky Academic Expectations define what students should know and be able to do upon graduation from high school. These large goals were used as a basis for developing the Program of Studies and the Core Content for Assessment.
The academic expectations for science are listed below:
Goal 2: Students shall develop their abilities to apply core concepts and principles from mathematics, the sciences, the arts, the humanities, social studies, practical living studies, and vocational studies to what they will encounter throughout their lives.
2.1 Students understand scientific ways of thinking and working and use those methods to solve real-life problems.
2.2 Students identify, analyze, and use patterns such as cycles and trends to understand past and present events and predict possible future events.
2.3 Students identify and analyze systems and the ways their components work together or affect each other.
2.4 Students use the concept of scale and scientific models to explain the organization and functioning of living and nonliving things and predict other characteristics that might be observed.
2.5 Students understand that under certain conditions nature tends to remain the same or move toward a balance.
2.6 Students understand how living and nonliving things change over time and the factors that influence the changes.
How is the Core Content for Science Assessment organized?
The Science Core Content for Assessment, Version 4.0 is organized by grade level (end of primary - 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and high school) in order to ensure continuity and conceptual development even though the current state assessment varies for those grade levels based on the content area. This is different from the current 3.0 Version, which is organized in grade spans. This version of the Core Content for Science Assessment includes 'off year' content standards as well as content for the currently assessed grades (four, seven, and eleven).
This version of the Core Content for Science Assessment has been organized around reporting categories and "Big Ideas," based on those found in the ATLAS of Science Literacy. The American Association published the ATLAS jointly for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA). Other national research-based resources used to make the determinations for content placement included Benchmarks for Science Literacy and Science for All Americans, which were also published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (http://www.aaas.org)
Each section has a narrative describing the "Big Idea," showing how the conceptual development of key concepts should spiral through the K-12 grades, and highlighting the unifying themes (Academic Expectations) and process skills that will provide rigor and help students to understand the content.
The reporting categories and "Big Ideas" for science are:
Reporting Categories Big Ideas
Physical Science Structure and Transformation of Matter
Earth/Space Science Motion and Forces
Biological Science The Earth and The Universe
Unifying Concepts Unity and Diversity
Biological Change
Energy Transformations
Interdependence
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Ordering Information
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Copyright Information
Copyright 2006, Scantron Corp. and
Bullitt County Public Schools
Copyright 2006, EdVISION.com Corp. and
Bullitt County Public Schools
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