• Three points: focuses on one of the issues researched; incorporates accurate factual material; written in a lively and engaging style; free of errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics

 

• Two points: focuses on one of the issues researched; incorporates some factual material; writing neither lively nor engaging; some errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics

 

• One point: fails to focus on one of the issues researched; incorporates no factual material or contains inaccurate material; writing neither lively nor engaging; numerous errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics

(6-8)Understands the concept of extinction and its importance in biological evolution (e.g., when the environment changes, the adaptive characteristics of some species are insufficient to allow their survival; extinction is common; most of the species that have lived on the Earth no longer exist).

(9-12)Knows that the basic idea of evolution is that the Earth's present-day life forms have evolved from earlier, distinctly different species as a consequence of the interactions of (1) the potential for a species to increase its numbers, (2) the genetic variability of offspring due to mutation and recombination of genes, (3) a finite supply of the resources required for life, and (4) the ensuing selection by the environment of those offspring better able to survive and leave offspring.

(9-12)Knows the history of the origin and evolution of life on Earth (e.g., life on Earth is thought to have begun 3.5 to 4 billion years ago as simple, one-celled organisms; during the first 2 billion years, only microorganisms existed; after cells with nuclei developed about a billion years ago, increasingly complex multicellular organisms evolved).

Grade level: 6-8, 9-12
Subject area: world history
Standard:
Understands the biological and cultural processes that shaped the earliest human communities.
Benchmarks:
(6-8)Understands the role of the environment in the development of different human communities (e.g., current and past theories regarding the emergence of Homo sapiens and the processes by which human groups populated the major world regions; how environmental conditions in the last ice age possibly affected changes in the economy, culture, and organization of human communities).

(9-12)Understands environmental, biological, and cultural influences on early human communities (e.g., how language helped early humans hunt and establish roles, rules, and structure within communities; the proposition that Mesolithic peoples were the first to take advantage of a changing climate; biological and cultural relationships between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens ).

Grade level: 6-8, 9-12
Subject area: world history
Standard:
Understands the processes that contributed to the emergence of agricultural societies around the world.
Benchmarks:
(6-8)Understands influences on the spread of agricultural communities (e.g., how local needs and conditions affected food plant domestication and worldwide patterns of settlement).

(6-8)Understands what archaeological evidence reveals about the social and cultural conditions of agricultural societies (e.g., the emergence of social class divisions, occupational specialization, differences in gender roles; long-distance trade routes in Southwest Asia; the importance of obsidian to this trade).

(6-8)Understands inherent disadvantages and advantages of hunter-gatherer and early farming styles.

(6-8)Understands the basis for the argument that agricultural life was an advance in human social development.

(9-12)Understands how agricultural communities maintained their produce and livestock (e.g., methods used by scholars to reconstruct the early history of domestication and agricultural settlement, how and why human groups domesticated wild grains and animals after the last ice age, the importance of controlling food supplies and storing them in the Neolithic revolution).

(9-12)Understands social and cultural factors that define agricultural communities (e.g., archaeological evidence that distinguishes hunter-gatherer from agricultural sites, the relationship between agricultural production and cultural change).