Earth's physical features occur in patterns.

• Ask questions that can be investigated and predict reasonable outcomes based on patterns such as cause and effect relationships.

• Make predictions about what would happen if a variable changes.

• Construct an explanation of observed relationships (e.g., the distribution of plants in the back yard).

• Identify the evidence that supports particular points in an explanation.

• Develop and/or use models to describe and/or predict phenomena.

• Use a model to test cause and effect relationships or interactions concering the functioning of natural or designed system.

• Analyze and interpret data to make sense of phenomena, using logical reasoning, mathematics, and/or computation.

• Use data to evaluate claims about cause and effect.

• Read and comprehend grade appropriate complex texts and/or other reliable media to summarize and obtain scientific and technical ideas and describe how they are supported by evidence.

• Compare and/or combine across complex texts and/or other reliable media to support the engagement in other scientific and/or engineering practices.

• Students identify similarities and differences in order to sort and classify natural objects and designed products. They identify patterns related to time, including simple rates of change and cycles, and to use these patterns to make predictions.

• Students recognize natural objects and observable phenomena exist from the very small to the immensely large. They use standard units to measure and describe physical quantities such as weight, time, temperature, and volume.

• Earth’s physical features occur in patterns, as do earthquakes and volcanoes. Maps can be used to locate features and determine patterns in those events

• Energy flows and matter cycles within and among Earth’s systems, including the sun and Earth’s interior as primary energy sources. Plate tectonics is one result of these processes.