North Carolina State Standards - Science Competency Goals, Grade 6

The Middle Grades chapter of North Carolina's Science Standard Course of Study describes Competency Goals, the first two of which apply to all middle-school grades, involving scientific inquiry and technological design, and are described in DITC's Shared Competency Goals page. "Designing technological solutions and pondering benefits and risks should be an integral part of the middle-school science experience." (p. 56)

This page describes the remaining goals that specifically apply to grade 6. A few design tasks in DITC could be contexts to address the issue of Energy Transfer. The Learning By Design and the Generic Design Cycle to the following description of process skills related to Scientific Inquiry (p. 84) and Technological Design (p. 85)

Competency Goal 6: Energy Transfer

6.01 Determine how convection and radiation transfer energy.
6.02 Analyze heat flow through materials or across space from warm objects to coller objects until both objects are at equilibrium.
6.06 Analyze response to heat to determine the suitability of materials for use in technology design via conduction, expansion and contraction.
The Winter Gloves design challenge, which was developed at TERC and later published by NSTA (National Science Teachers Association), can be done in 3-5 days and addresses concepts related to heat energy and the selection of materials for reducing heat flow.
6.04 Evaluate data for qualitative and quantitative relationships linked with energy transfer/transformation.
6.07 Analyze the Law of Conservation of Energy: conclude that the amount of energy stays the same, with some energy converted to heat; some systems transfer energy will less loss to heat than others.
The idea of moving between potential and stored energy to kinetic or the energy of motion can be found in a number of design activities, including the design of model cars (Vehicles in Motion), Electromagnets and Simple Machines). Reduction of friction is key to a successful design of a model car in the first challenge.

Competency Goal 7: Understand Population Dynamics

7.04 Evaluate data related to human population growth, along with problems/solutions involving waste disposal, food supplies, and transportation.
Using the idea of "technology" to refer to Systems that are physical or organize ideas or events helps to meet this goal. Students also need to know how designing technology involves Tradeoffs.