8 What are the state standards?

The state standards are lists of skill sets that learners are expected to demonstrate. These are organized by area (e.g. life sciences or physical sciences) and by grade level. Most of the directly applicable ones relate to nutrition, growth, biodiversity and evolution.

You can check out Malone’s curated list with some links and ideas included.

See this site for the full set of state standards for science in Minnesota. The site includes other resources for Minnesota instructors and programs that might also be worth checking out.

Nexgenscience.org has project ideas organized by grade and standard.  There is a lot of information on these pages.  Don’t hesitate to click on the links (it is safe).

This is the top half of a page from nexgenscience about high school structure and function standards in life sciences. Clicking on storyline gives more context and explanation.

This is the bottom half of the same page. Click on the related quality units (right side bar) to see examples that have been developed and assessed.  These examples might give you some great ideas. See M’Kenna’s medical mystery as one example. Most of their projects center around humans so your work could be similar but animal focused.