This is the second in a series of posts relating to the physical science content standards for grades 5 through 8 of the 2005 National Science Education Standards from the National Research Council. We’ll look at how Real Science-4-Kids (RS4K) and Kogs-4-Kids (K4K) texts align with these.

National Science Education Standards; Physical Science 2:

MOTIONS AND FORCES

1. The motion of an object can be described by its position, direction of motion, and speed. That motion can be measured and represented on a graph.
2. An object that is not being subjected to a force will continue to move at a constant speed and in a straight line.
3. If more than one force acts on an object along a straight line, then the forces will reinforce or cancel one another, depending on their direction and magnitude. Unbalanced forces will cause changes in the speed or direction of an object's motion.

Real Science-4-Kids meets this standard in the following ways:

The National Standards for “physical science” includes the subjects of chemistry and physics (“life science” or biology is addressed separately). Because each level of the RS4K curricula covers subjects in the same order (with more depth added for higher levels), the following alignments are generally true for Pre-Level I and Level II as well as Level I. However, specific examples are taken from Level I texts and workbooks since that age range most closely matches that of the National Standards presented here. Kogs workbooks match the subject matter of each chapter but expand that subject in the context of the book’s category (philosophy, critical thinking, history, etc.). Because information is built upon with each chapter, many types of knowledge in the standards show up in virtually all chapters. However, the key chapters for each section are shown below.

1. The Student Textbook for physics and the corresponding experiments in the Laboratory Workbook have numerous chapters specifically addressing the knowledge listed in section A above. They include: chapter 2 (Force, Energy and Work), which addresses specifically this definition; and chapter 1 (What Is Physics?). Formulas are provided and explained, with results generally shown in table format (which can be plotted on a graph). For some experiments, students are asked to draw progressions of motion in graph-like fashion.
2. The physics books address the knowledge listed in section B above with chapters including: chapter 4 (Motion).
3. The physics books address the knowledge listed in section C above primarily in chapter 2 (Force, Energy and Work, which includes balanced and unbalanced forces) and chapter 4 (Motion).