ELA Standard One: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for information and understanding.

Students will read from informational text such as online and electronic databases and web sites.

Performance Indicators:
1) Students will apply thinking skills such as define, classify, and infer to interpret data, facts, and ideas from informational texts.
2) Students will read and follow written multi-step directions or procedures to accomplish a task or complete an assignment.
3) Students will relate new information to prior reading and experience
4) Students will draw conclusions and make inferences based on explicit and implied information

Students will write informational essays

Performance Indicators:
1) Students will Include relevant information and exclude irrelevant information
2) Students will support ideas with examples, definitions, analogies, and direct references to the text
3) Students will cite sources in footnotes and bibliography, using correct form

Standard 4-Science Intermediate: Students will understand and apply scientific concepts, principles, and theories pertaining to the living environment and recognize the historical development of ideas in science.

Organisms maintain a dynamic equilibrium that sustains life.

Students will :
1) Compare the way a variety of living specimens carry outbasic life functions and maintain dynamic equilibrium.
2) Describe the importance of major nutrients, vitamins, and minerals in maintaining health and promoting growth and explain the need for a constant input of energy for living organisms.

Plants and animals depend on each other and their physical environment.

Students will :
1) Describe the flow of energy and matter through food chains and food webs.
2) Human decisions and activities have had a profound impact on the physical and living environment.

Students will :
1) Describe how living things, including humans, depend upon the living and nonliving environment for their survival.
2) Describe the effects of environmental changes on humans and other populations.

Social Studies Standard 5- Civics, Citizenship, and Government

Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the necessity for establishing governments; the governmental system of U.S. and other nations; the U.S. Constitution; the basic civic values of American constitutional democracy; and the roles, rights,and responsibilities of citizenship, including avenues of participation.

The study of civics and citizenship requires the ability to probe ideas and assumptions, ask and answer analytical questions, take a skeptical attitude toward questionable arguments, evaluate evidence, formulate rational conclusions, and develop and refine participatory skills.

Students will :
1) Participate in community activities that focus on an issue or problem
2) Prepare a plan of action that defines the issue or problem, suggests alternative solutions or courses of action, evaluates the consequences for each alternative solution or course of action, prioritizes the solutions based on established criteria, and proposes an action plan to address the issue or to resolve the problem.