Food and Agriculture Center for Science Education — Home
Curriculum Materials

Standards Alignment

Performance Expectations

HS-LS1-1: 

  • Construct an explanation based on evidence for how the structure of DNA determines the structure of proteins, which carry out the essential functions of life through systems of specialized cells.

HS-LS1-2: 

  • Develop and use a model to illustrate the hierarchical organization of interacting systems that provide specific functions within multicellular organisms.  

HS-LS1-3: 

  • Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence that feedback mechanisms maintain homeostasis. 

HS-LS2-3: 

  • Construct and revise an explanation based on evidence for the cycling of matter and flow of energy in aerobic and anaerobic conditions. 
View more ↓
Disciplinary Core Ideas

LS1.A-H1: 

  • Systems of specialized cells within organisms help them perform the essential functions of life. 

LS1.A-H3: 

  • Multicellular organisms have a hierarchical structural organization, in which any one system is made up of numerous parts and is itself a component of the next level.

LS1.A-H4: 

  • Feedback mechanisms maintain a living system’s internal conditions within certain limits and mediate behaviors, allowing it to remain alive and functional even as external conditions change within some range. Feedback mechanisms can encourage (through positive feedback) or discourage (negative feedback) what is going on inside the living system.

LS2.B-H1: 

  • Photosynthesis and cellular respiration (including anaerobic processes) provide most of the energy for life processes.
View more ↓
Science & Engineering Practices

Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions:

  • Construct and revise an explanation based on valid and reliable evidence obtained from a variety of sources (including students’ own investigations, models, theories, simulations, peer review) and the assumption that theories and laws that describe the natural world operate today as they did in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

Analyzing and Interpreting Data:

  • Compare and contrast various types of data sets (e.g., self-generated, archival) to examine consistency of measurements and observations.

Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information:

  • Communicate scientific and/or technical information or ideas (e.g. about phenomena and/or the process of development and the design and performance of a proposed process or system) in multiple formats (including orally, graphically, textually, and mathematically).

Developing and Using Models:

  • Use a model to provide mechanistic accounts of phenomena.
View more ↓
Crosscutting Concepts

Stability and Change:

  • Much of science deals with constructing explanations of how things change and how they remain stable.
  • Feedback (negative or positive) can stabilize or destabilize a system.

Scale, Proportion, and Quantity:

  • Using the concept of orders of magnitude allows one to understand how a model at one scale relates to a model at another scale.
View more ↓

In this high school 5E unit, students investigate how milk helps athletes recover from intense exercise. Students begin by observing a series of professional athletes undergoing intense exercise and drinking milk after their exercise sessions. Across a series of four modules, students figure out how exercise impacts the body and how milk helps with recovery. Students explore body temperature and water balance, heart and breathing rate increases, and muscle fatigue. To conclude the unit, students explore muscle recovery.