Colorado State Competition > Local Programs and Areas of Study

Local information | Prepared Graduate Competencies in Science

The preschool through twelfth-grade concepts and skills that all students who complete the Colorado education system must master to ensure their success in a postsecondary and workforce setting.

Prepared Graduates:
  • Analyze the relationship between structure and function in living systems at a variety of organizational levels, and recognize living systems’ dependence on natural selection
  • Explain and illustrate with examples how living systems interact with the biotic and abiotic environment
  • Analyze how various organisms grow, develop, and differentiate during their lifetimes based on an interplay between genetics and their environment
  • Explain how biological evolution accounts for the unity and diversity of living organisms
  • Describe and interpret how Earth’s geologic history and place in space are relevant to our understanding of the processes that have shaped our planet
  • Evaluate evidence that Earth’s geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere interact as a complex system
  • Describe how humans are dependent on the diversity of resources provided by Earth and Sun


21st Century Skills and Readiness Competencies in ScienceColorado’s Description of 21st Century Skills
Colorado’s description of 21st century skills is a synthesis of the essential abilities students must apply in our rapidly changing world. Today’s students need a repertoire of knowledge and skills that are more diverse, complex, and integrated than any previous generation. These skills do not stand alone in the standards, but are woven into the evidence outcomes, inquiry questions, and application and are within the nature of science. Science inherently demonstrates each of Colorado’s 21st century skills, as follows:

Critical Thinking and Reasoning
Science requires students to analyze evidence and draw conclusions based on that evidence. Scientific investigation involves defining problems and designing studies to test hypotheses related to those problems. In science, students must justify and defend scientific explanations and distinguish between correlation and causation.

Information Literacy
Understanding science requires students to research current ideas about the natural world. Students must be able to distinguish fact from opinion and truth from fantasy. Science requires a degree of skepticism because the ideas of science are subject to change. Science students must be able to understand what constitutes reliable sources of information and how to validate those sources. One key to science is understanding that converging different lines of evidence from multiple sources strengthens a scientific conclusion.

Collaboration
Science students must be able to listen to others’ ideas, and engage in scientific dialogs that are based on evidence – not opinion. These types of conversations allow them to compare and evaluate the merit of different ideas. The peer review process helps to ensure the validity of scientific explanations.

Self-Direction
Students in science must have persistence and perseverance when exploring scientific concepts. Students must generate their own questions, and design investigations to find the answers. Students must be open to revising and redefining their thinking based on evidence.

Invention
Designing investigations and engineering new products involves a large degree of invention. Scientists and engineers often have to think “outside the box” as they push the limits of our current knowledge. They must learn from their failures to take the next steps in understanding. Science students also must integrate ideas from multiple disciplines to formulate an understanding of the natural world. In addition to using invention to design investigations, scientists also use findings from investigations to help them to invent new products.

Learning Objectives

Resources