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Middle School

Matter and Its Interactions

 

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

Performance Expectations
 

 

Develop and use a model to describe how the total number of atoms does not change in a chemical reaction and thus mass is conserved. MS-PS1-5

Clarification Statement and Assessment Boundary

Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on law of conservation of matter and on physical models or drawings, including digital forms, that represent atoms.

Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include the use of atomic masses, balancing symbolic equations, or intermolecular forces.

Science and Engineering Practices

Developing and Using Models

Modeling in 6–8 builds on K–5 experiences and progresses to developing, using, and revising models to describe, test, and predict more abstract phenomena and design systems.

Develop a model to describe unobservable mechanisms. (MS-PS1-5)

Connections to Nature of Science

Science Models, Laws, Mechanisms, and Theories Explain Natural Phenomena

Laws are regularities or mathematical descriptions of natural phenomena. (MS-PS1-5)

Disciplinary Core Ideas

PS1.B:  Chemical Reactions

Substances react chemically in characteristic ways. In a chemical process, the atoms that make up the original substances are regrouped into different molecules, and these new substances have different properties from those of the reactants. (MS-PS1-5) (Note: This Disciplinary Core Idea is also addressed by MS-PS1-3.)

The total number of each type of atom is conserved, and thus the mass does not change. (MS-PS1-5)

Crosscutting Concepts

Energy and Matter

Matter is conserved because atoms are conserved in physical and chemical processes. (MS-PS1-5)

Common Core State Standards Connections

ELA/Literacy
  • RST.6-8.7 - Integrate quantitative or technical information expressed in words in a text with a version of that information expressed visually (e.g., in a flowchart, diagram, model, graph, or table). (MS-PS1-5)
Mathematics
  • 6.RP.A.3 - Use ratio and rate reasoning to solve real-world and mathematical problems, e.g., by reasoning about tables of equivalent ratios, tape diagrams, double number line diagrams, or equations. (MS-PS1-5)
  • MP.2 - Reason abstractly and quantitatively. (MS-PS1-5)
  • MP.4 - Model with mathematics. (MS-PS1-5)