LABORATORY REQUIREMENT: Students who take this course spend a minimum of 30% of their time engaged in laboratory exercises. All DoDEA science courses have this minimum 30% time period for laboratory exercises.

Major Concepts/Content: Earth and Space Science is designed to help students understand the world around them and increase their ability to evaluate that world.  Information is presented in an integrated approach with science as inquiry, science & technology, science & social perspectives, and the history & nature of science.  The course integrates unifying science concepts and processes of systems, order & organization, evidence, models & explanation, change, consistency & equilibrium; and form & function. 

Scientific inquiry and understanding about inquiry are emphasized through practical implications and meaningful applications.  Topics students' study includes geology, astronomy, meteorology, oceanography, and ecology.

Major Instructional Activities: Based on the philosophy that scientific knowledge is best acquired through inquiry, the course uses a variety of techniques to introduce, stimulate, explore, and reinforce major scientific concepts, theories, principles, and skills.

Instructional activities are staged in appropriate settings.  They include laboratories, classrooms, forms of technology, and field studies.  Teaching strategies include investigations, demonstrations, discussions, and hands-on/minds-on experiences.

Major Evaluation Techniques: All aspects (e.g., ability to inquire, scientific understanding of the natural world, and understanding of the nature and utility of science) of progress in science are measured using multiple methods such as individual and group performances, projects, interviews, reports, student-generated works, and/or conventional testing.

Essential Objectives: Upon completion of Earth and Space Science, students should be able to:

• Engage in full and partial scientific inquiries to design, conduct, and communicate scientific investigations to explore ideas about the natural world.
• Use scientific inquiry to design and conduct scientific investigations to meet a human need, make a decision, solve a human problem, or develop a product.
• Recognize and describe the interrelationship between science and technology.
• Apply the tools of technology (e.g., computers) in scientific endeavors.
• Identify qualities inherent in scientific behavior (e.g., reasoning, insight, energy, skill, and creativity).
• Discuss contributions of men and women of various social and ethnic backgrounds to science and technology.
• Apply science concepts to make decisions (weighing risks and benefits) about students' personal health and well-being.
• Assess the energy transfer in the earth system and explain dynamic processes that determine global climate.
• Relate the earth's geochemical cycles (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, water) to geological processes.
• Critique theories on the origin and evolution of the earth system.
• Summarize theories on the origin and evolution of the universe.
• Support wise use of natural resources.
• Measure and evaluate the effect of human societies on earth.
• Distinguish between human and natural hazards.

Last Revised: July 21, 2005