Investigations that focus on the anchor phenomenon that animals and plants interact with their environment and with each other. The driving question for the module deals with structure and function—How do the structures of an organism allow it to survive in its environment?

The guiding questions for the module are how is water involved in weather, and are weather conditions the same around the world and throughout the year? Students explore the properties of water, the water cycle, and interactions between water and other earth materials. Students learn how humans use water as a natural resource

The anchor phenomena students investigate in the Earth and Sun Module are the patterns observed in the sky over a day, a month, a year, and more, and their effect on Earth.

Provides firsthand experiences in physical science dealing with the anchor phenomenon of energy. The five investigations focus on the concepts that energy is present whenever there is motion, electric current, sound, light, or heat, and that energy can transfer from one place to other.

Provides students with firsthand experiences with soils and rocks and modeling experiences using tools such as topographic maps and stream tables to engage with the anchor phenomenon of the surface of Earth’s landscape—the shape and the composition of landforms.

The Mixtures and Solutions Module has five investigations that engage students with the phenomena of matter and its interactions in our everyday life—mixtures, solutions, solubility, concentration, and chemical reactions.

The Structures of Life Module consists of four investigations dealing with big ideas in life science—plants and animals are organisms and exhibit a variety of strategies for life, organisms are complex and have a variety of observable structures and behaviors, organisms have varied but predictable life cycles and reproduce their own kind, and individual organisms have variations in their traits that may provide an advantage in surviving in the environment

The idea of a system is one of the grand integrating (crosscutting) concepts that pervades all of science. In the Living Systems Module, students start by looking at Earth as the interaction of four Earth systems or subsystems—the geosphere, the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and the biosphere. The focus of the module then turns to the biosphere as students explore the phenomenon of ecosystems and organisms in terms of their interacting parts. The driving question for the module is how can we describe Earth’s biosphere as a system of interacting parts?

provides grade 3 students with experiences around physical sciences core ideas dealing with forces and interactions, matter and its interactions, and with engineering design

The FOSS Weather and Water Course focuses on the phenomena of Earth’s atmosphere, weather, and water