Grade 1 Units
Every Insights unit focuses on engaging students in the practices of science and helping them make explicit connections between key practices identified in each activity and how they engaged with those practices during the activity.
Below you will find an overview and a sample activity for each unit.
Exploring Light
This unit focuses students on the characteristics and behavior of light and the ideas that light interacts differently with different materials and objects and that light must be present in order for us to see.
Insights separates explorations of light and sound because young children experience these two as conceptually distinct phenomena. Combined with Exploring Sound, these units are directly aligned to the NGSS for Grade 1 Waves: Light and Sound.
- Unit Overview (pdf)
- Sample Activity: Creating and Investigating Shadows Outdoors
Exploring Sound
This unit introduces students to the relationship between sound and vibration and ultimately to the idea that sound travels through a variety of materials. It also focuses students on the characteristics of sound including volume and pitch. These experiences lay the foundation for a later understanding of waves.
Insights separates explorations of light and sound because young children experience these two as conceptually distinct phenomena. Combined with Exploring Light, these units are aligned to the NGSS for Grade 1 Waves: Light and Sound.
- Unit Overview (pdf)
- Sample Activity: Exploring Vibrations
Plants and Animals
Students explore the overarching question, What does it mean to be living?, with an emphasis on structure and function. The unit capitalizes on children's general interest and curiosity about insects and other animals and their current knowledge of animals as living things by alternating animal and plant investigations, generally beginning with animals and extending to plants (although they do plant bean seeds early on in order to get them started).
The activities in this unit are aligned with the NGSS standards for Grade 1 Structure, Function and Information Processing.
- Unit Overview (pdf)
- Sample Activity: Creating and Investigating Shadows Outdoors