Georgia S2E3.a
The Standard
Ask questions to obtain information about major changes to the environment in your community.
Georgia Standards of Excellence for Science · Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information about how weather, plants, animals, and humans cause changes to the environment.
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students notice a large or lasting change in a nearby place and form clear questions about what happened, why, and what was affected. They gather answers from observations, photographs, maps, short texts, or interviews, then share what the evidence shows.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Given before-and-after images of a local place, students ask relevant, answerable questions and choose useful sources. They explain the change using details from those sources rather than guesses.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may treat a daily weather shift as a lasting environmental change, or assume every change is harmful. They may ask vague questions or give answers based on guesses instead of evidence.
How to Assess It
- Show before-and-after photos of a local park following construction or a storm. Ask students to write two questions and name one source they could use to find each answer.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Walk the schoolyard with clipboards, mark evidence of environmental change on a simple map, and write one question about each example.
Show two photos of a local place from different years, then have students write what changed and three questions they would ask.
Play Question Sort by grouping cards into useful, vague, and unrelated questions about a changed creek, park, or neighborhood.
Read a local news report about flooding, tree removal, or construction, then list the environmental changes and remaining questions.
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Printable S2E3.a Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to S2E3.a, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
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Related Standards
- S3L2.a
Ask questions to collect information and create records of sources and effects of pollution on the plants and animals.
- S2E3.b
Construct an explanation of the causes and effects of a change to the environment in your community.
- S2E3
Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information about how weather, plants, animals, and humans cause changes to the environment.
- S5E1.c
Ask questions to obtain information on how technology is used to limit and/or predict the impact of constructive and destructive processes.
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