Correlations between HCPSS Science Curriculum and Texas State Science

Standards

Essential Questions

Why is water essential?
What limitations exist that impact the availability of fresh water for everyone?
What are the stressors on the worlds limited water resources?
How do local water issues impact our lives?
Which solutions to local water issues exist?
What global water issues exist and how are they being addressed?
How are the possible solutions to limited water availability impacted by the environment?
What geographical, political, environmental factors impact water as a resource
worldwide?
What are the personal choices we make that impact water cleanliness and availability?

Adapted from:
Howard County Public School System Grade 6 Reading Module: Future of Water
In this learning experience, students will investigate the issues surrounding access to safe and
clean water supplies both locally and globally.

Maryland Essential Science Curriculum

http://www.hcpss.org/academics/science/curr
_science_06.pdf

http://www.hcpss.org/academics/science/curr
_science_07.pdf

Texas Science Standards

http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter112/ch
112b.html

Goal 4. Recognize and explain how human
activities can accelerate or magnify many
naturally occurring changes.

a. Based on data from research identify and
describe how natural processes change the
environment.

Sedimentation in watersheds
Cyclic climate change

b. Identify and describe how human activities
produce changes in natural processes.

Climate change
Grade 7
Organisms and environments.

(i) Students will understand the relationship
between living organisms and their environment.
Different environments support different living
organisms that are adapted to that region of
Earth. Organisms are living systems that
maintain a steady state with that environment
and whose balance may be disrupted by internal
and external stimuli. External stimuli include
human activity or the environment. Successful
organisms can reestablish a balance through
different processes such as a feedback
mechanism. Ecological succession can be seen


Cycling of matter

Goal 5. Recognize and compare how
different parts of the world have varying
amounts and types of natural resources and
how the use of those resources impacts
environmental quality.

a. Identify and describe natural resources as:

Land
Water
Wind
Fossil fuels
Minerals.

b. Identify and describe the distribution of
natural resources around the Earth.

c. Identify and describe how the natural
change processes may be affected by human
activities.

Agriculture
Beach preservation
Mining
Development /construction
Stream/river alteration

on a broad or small scale.

Earth and space. The student knows that natural
events and human activity can impact Earth
systems. The student is expected to:

(A) predict and describe how different types of
catastrophic events impact ecosystems such as
floods, hurricanes, or tornadoes;

(B) analyze the effects of weathering, erosion,
and deposition on the environment in ecoregions
of Texas; and

(C) model the effects of human activity on
groundwater and surface water in a watershed.

Grade 8

(b) Knowledge and skills.

(11) Organisms and environments. The student
knows that interdependence occurs among living
systems and the environment and that human
activities can affect these systems. The student is
expected to:
(A) describe producer/consumer, predator/prey,
and parasite/host relationships as they occur in
food webs within marine, freshwater, and
terrestrial ecosystems;
(B) investigate how organisms and populations
in an ecosystem depend on and may compete for
biotic and abiotic factors such as quantity of
light, water, range of temperatures, or soil
composition;
(C) explore how short- and long-term
environmental changes affect organisms and
traits in subsequent populations; and
(D) recognize human dependence on ocean
systems and explain how human activities such
as runoff, artificial reefs, or use of resources
have modified these systems.