NGSS Correlations
The Salmon in the Schools program helps students understand and apply the three dimensions of NGSS learning: disciplinary core ideas (DCI), science and engineering practices (SEP), and crosscutting concepts (CCC). Opportunities for NGSS correlations are described below.
Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI)
- Life Science (LS1): Students learn that organisms have diverse life cycles, but all involve birth, growth, reproduction, and death by observing the salmon’s journey from egg to fry. They see how environmental factors like water quality affect growth.
- Life Science (LS2): Students explore interdependent relationships and the cycling of matter and energy in ecosystems. They analyze how resource availability, such as clean, cold water, affects the salmon population. They can also study how changes to the ecosystem, such as human impacts, affect the salmon population.
- Life Science (LS3/LS4): The program demonstrates inherited traits and variation. Students can study how variations in characteristics among individual salmon might offer advantages for survival and reproduction. This includes observing adaptations, such as the parr marks on young salmon.
- Earth and Space Science (ESS2/ESS3): For older students, the program connects to the role of water in Earth’s surface processes and human impacts on natural systems. Students can analyze how changes in the watershed affect salmon habitats, such as increased silt from construction.
Science and Engineering Practices (SEP)
- Planning and Carrying Out Investigations: Students are directly involved in monitoring the aquarium and its inhabitants. They collect and analyze data on water temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen to ensure the salmon’s survival.
- Developing and Using Models: Students can build models of stream habitats and food webs to describe the flow of energy and matter in the ecosystem.
- Analyzing and Interpreting Data: Students use data from their water quality tests to understand the environmental conditions necessary for salmon survival and how those conditions are affected by changes.
- Constructing Explanations: By comparing the classroom environment to a natural habitat, students construct evidence-based explanations for how specific conditions affect the salmon and its ecosystem.
Crosscutting Concepts (CCC)
- Cause and Effect: Students can see a direct cause-and-effect relationship, such as how changes in
water temperature or quality affect the eggs and fry. - Systems and System Models: The aquarium itself is a model of a natural ecosystem, allowing students to study the interactions between living (salmon) and non-living (water, rocks components.
- Structure and Function: Students learn how the different internal and external structures of the salmon function to support its survival, growth, and reproduction at each life stage.