Alternate Assessment Standards for Students with Severe Disabilities
Physical Setting

Standard 4:

Students will understand and apply scientific concepts, principles, and theories pertaining to the physical setting and living environment and recognize the historical development of ideas in science.

Key Ideas & Performance Indicators:

Key Idea 1: The Earth and celestial phenomena can be described by principles of relative motion and perspective.

Performance Indicators--Students:

• recognize patterns of daily, monthly and seasonal changes in their environment

Key Idea 2: Many of the phenomena that we observe on Earth involve interactions among components of air, water, and land.

Performance Indicators--Students:

• observe the relationships among air, water, and land on Earth

Key Idea 3: Matter is made up of particles whose properties determine the observable characteristics of matter and its reactivity.

Performance Indicators--Students:

• observe and describe properties of materials using appropriate tools
• observe chemical and physical changes, including changes in states of matter

Key Idea 4: Energy exists in many forms, and when these forms change energy is conserved.

Performance Indicators--Students:

• observe a variety of forms of energy (e.g., heat, chemical, light) and the changes that occur in objects when they interact with those forms of energy

Key Idea 5: Energy and matter interact through forces that result in changes in motion.

Performance Indicators--Students:

• investigate the use of common forces (pushes and pulls) on objects, such as those caused by gravity, magnetism, and mechanical forces