What does a student learn in StateMississippi,GradeGrade 5,SubjectScience?

Students study how living things depend on each other and on their environment to survive. They look at food webs, habitats, and what happens when one part of an ecosystem changes.

Plants turn sunlight into food through photosynthesis. Students learn how that process powers plant growth and why it matters for nearly every living thing that depends on plants for energy.

Plants use sunlight, water, and air to make their own food and store it as energy. Students research how that process works and explain it in their own words.

Students examine places with little or no sunlight, like the ocean floor or a dense forest, and explain how plants and other organisms still get the energy they need to grow, whether from filtered light or artificial sources.

A healthy ecosystem keeps a balance between plants, plant-eaters, meat-eaters, and decomposers. Students learn how each living thing depends on the others, and what happens when one part of that chain is removed.

Students compare different ecosystems, like deserts, rain forests, and oceans, and identify the kinds of plants and animals that survive in each one.

Students build a food chain to sort living things into three roles: plants that make food, animals that eat other organisms, and decomposers that break down dead matter. They trace how energy moves from one organism to the next.

Students build and read food web diagrams to predict what happens when one species disappears or a new one moves in. A change to one animal or plant can ripple through every other organism in that ecosystem.

Students map out where humans fit in food webs, then explain how human choices, like farming or fishing, can shift what other plants and animals get to eat.

Students learn how matter is organized, from tiny atoms up to the materials we can hold and see, and how substances interact and change when they combine.

Physical properties are things you can observe or measure about a material without changing what it is. Students identify properties like color, hardness, and whether something sinks or floats.

Students learn what atoms and molecules are and study their basic physical properties, like size, mass, and how they behave. They read scientific sources and use what they find to describe the building blocks that make up everything around them.

Students measure and compare physical properties of solids, liquids, and gases, such as how much space they take up, what shape they hold, and how their particles move. Data from those measurements gets recorded and explained.

Students sort materials like powders, metals, and liquids by testing their properties. They check things like whether a material dissolves in water, conducts electricity, or sticks to a magnet.

Students predict whether an object will sink or float based on how heavy it is for its size, then drop it in water to check. Denser objects sink; less dense ones float.

Students build a small boat or container meant to carry something heavy (like coins or marbles) across water without sinking. They plan, test, and improve the design based on what actually happens.

Mixtures combine two or more materials that stay separate and can be sorted back out. Solutions are a type of mixture where one material fully dissolves into another, like salt disappearing into water.

Students look up and evaluate real scientific sources to explain how mixing substances, like salt dissolving in water, changes properties such as taste, color, or concentration while each substance stays the same at its core.

Students figure out how "concentrated" a mixture is by comparing how much of a substance (like salt or sugar) is dissolved in a liquid. More dissolved stuff in the same amount of liquid means a stronger, more concentrated solution.

Students test what makes a substance (like sugar or salt) dissolve faster in water. They change one thing at a time, such as water temperature, how often they stir, or how finely the solid is ground, and observe how each change affects the speed.

Students design and build a system to separate a mixture, such as pulling out iron filings with a magnet or filtering sand from water. Then they test it, find what isn't working, and improve it.

Physical changes alter how something looks or feels (tearing paper, melting ice) without creating a new substance. Chemical changes produce something entirely new, like rust forming on metal or baking soda fizzing in vinegar.

Students observe what happens when materials change in ways that can't be undone, like wood turning to ash, iron turning to rust, or a raw egg turning solid in a pan. They describe what's different about the new material formed.

Physical changes alter how a substance looks or feels without turning it into something new. Students study changes like melting ice, cutting paper, or mixing salt into water, then explain what happened and whether the change can be undone.

When two substances are mixed together, the total weight stays the same before and after mixing. Students study data from experiments to show that matter isn't gained or lost, just rearranged.

Students learn how objects move, what makes them speed up or slow down, and how energy changes form. They connect pushes, pulls, and motion to real examples like ramps, collisions, and swinging pendulums.

Newton's Laws explain why objects speed up, slow down, or change direction. Students study how force and mass determine the way things move, from a rolling ball to a sliding book.

Gravity pulls every object toward the ground. Students learn why a dropped ball falls, why things feel heavy, and why objects always fall down instead of sideways or up.

Students watch how an object moves, then predict where it will go next. They use measurements of speed and direction to back up their prediction.

Students test how pushing, pulling, or gravity changes the way an object moves. A bigger force moves something farther or faster; a different type of force can change its direction entirely.

Students set up experiments to test how pushes and pulls change the speed or direction of a moving object. They learn that equal forces on both sides keep an object steady, while unequal forces cause it to speed up, slow down, or turn.

Students predict what happens to a moving object when you push harder, add weight, or change the surface it rolls on. The goal is to see how stored energy, like a ball at the top of a ramp, turns into motion.

Students design something that uses friction to slow or stop a moving object, like a braking system or a non-slip surface. They follow the engineering design process: identify the problem, build a solution, test it, and make it better.

Students learn how Earth fits into the larger universe, tracing connections from their own backyard out to the solar system and beyond. They study how Earth's place in space shapes the patterns we see, like seasons, day and night, and the motion of stars.

Students learn where things sit in the universe, from nearby planets in our solar system to distant stars and galaxies far beyond it.

Students build or draw a scaled-down model of the solar system, showing where each planet sits in order from the Sun, how big it is relative to the others, and whether it is made of rock or gas.

Students explain why the sun looks so much brighter in our sky than stars visible at night. The key is distance: the sun is far closer to Earth than any other star.

Students learn why the star patterns visible on a winter night differ from those visible in summer. As Earth orbits the sun, our view of the night sky shifts, so different constellations appear at different times of year.

Students make a case for why studying the sky mattered to explorers, using tools like telescopes and star charts as evidence. This standard is about arguing from facts, not just describing history.

Students learn why the moon looks different each night, why the sun rises and sets, and why seasons change. It all comes down to how Earth and the moon move through space.

Students track how the moon's shape, position, and movement change night by night across a month, then look for patterns that repeat year after year. They use real data from space and weather agencies to back up what they find.

Students build and use a model of the Earth, Sun, and Moon to explain why the Moon appears to change shape each month, why eclipses happen, and why seasons shift through the year.

Students build and use diagrams or models to show why Earth has seasons. The key ideas are Earth's tilt, its path around the sun, and the angle at which sunlight hits the ground at different times of year.

Students learn how scientists once believed the Sun orbited Earth, and how later thinkers like Copernicus proved Earth orbits the Sun instead. Reading and comparing those older and newer ideas shows how scientific thinking changes over time.

Students learn where Earth's resources come from, how people use them, and why some run out while others can be renewed.

Students learn how human activity affects the land, water, and air around them, and practice thinking about ways to protect those resources for the future.

Students gather and sort real-world ideas for protecting resources like water, soil, and air. They look at actions people and communities can take, such as reducing pollution or recycling, to keep Earth's natural systems healthy.

Students design a plan to help a community survive a disaster, like a flood or hurricane, then build and test their solution to see if it works and how to make it better.