Chapter 4: Integrated STEM Through Physical Science Anchor Standards
What is it?
“Understanding a process at any scale requires awareness of the interactions occurring—in terms of the forces between objects, the related energy transfers, and their consequences. In this way, the physical sciences—physics and chemistry—underlie all natural and human created phenomena, although other kinds of information transfers, such as those facilitated by the genetic code or communicated between organisms, may also be critical to understanding their behavior. An overarching goal for learning in the physical sciences, therefore, is to help students see that there are mechanisms of cause and effect in all systems and processes that can be understood through a common set of physical and chemical principles.” (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2012, p. 103)
There are four core ideas within physical science that span the K-6 grade range, appearing in different grades at different levels. These are:
PS1: Matter and its Interactions
PS2: Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions
PS3: Energy
PS4: Waves and their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer
Explore the physical science standards to learn more about what they mean, to what extent they are emphasized in a given grade range, and how the concepts build on one another across the grades. In this chapter, we will give you an example of a set of learning experiences with physical science as the anchoring standard.
*National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2012). A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/13165.
