Connecticut standards alignment

• 5-LS2-1

  Partially covered

  Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment.

  Covered by

  • Manure and Compost

  • · 1 · What a loop is, and the two rules this course reads
  • · 9 · What composting is: carbon, nitrogen, water and air
  • · 22 · Build your own loop

  What we do and don't cover: The capstone (lesson 22, an assignment the learner submits and an instructor grades) has the learner develop exactly this model for their own ground: boxes for plants, animals, decomposers and soil, arrows labelled with the matter each carries, and the leaks out of the system. PARTIAL because the clarification statement's emphasis, that plants change matter that is not food (air, water) into food, is not taught: the course follows decomposed material back into soil and crops, not photosynthesis.

• MS-LS2-3

  Partially covered

  Develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem.

  Covered by

  • Manure and Compost

  • · 1 · What a loop is, and the two rules this course reads
  • · 9 · What composting is: carbon, nitrogen, water and air
  • · 22 · Build your own loop

  What we do and don't cover: Matter cycling among animals, microbes, soil and crops is taught directly, and the capstone (an instructor-graded assignment) has the learner build the model and define the boundary of their own system, as the clarification statement asks. PARTIAL because energy flow appears only as the heat a compost pile gives off; there is no treatment of energy moving through an ecosystem.

• HS-LS2-3

  Partially covered

  Construct and revise an explanation based on evidence for the cycling of matter and flow of energy in aerobic and anaerobic conditions.

  Covered by

  • Manure and Compost

  • · 9 · What composting is: carbon, nitrogen, water and air
  • · 10 · Heat, oxygen and time: the stages of a pile
  • · 12 · Turning, cold heaps, and worms

  What we do and don't cover: Composting is taught as aerobic decomposition, and the learner reads temperature evidence to tell a working aerobic pile from cold zones the NRCS composting chapter calls likely sites of anaerobic decomposition. PARTIAL because the course stops at that evidence: it does not teach aerobic or anaerobic respiration as processes (which the assessment boundary also excludes at the chemical level) and treats energy only as pile temperature.

What we don't claim

A standards page is only worth reading if the omissions are honest too. We looked at these and left them out:

• Mathematics — nothing. This catalog does no mathematics instruction, so it meets no Connecticut Core Standards (Common Core) mathematics standard.
• Science: partial claims, through the shared NGSS file. Connecticut adopted the NGSS in 2015 as its K-12 science standards, so our science claims come through the shared NGSS mapping, each partial and with its limit stated on the entry; any NGSS code this state rewords or dropped is listed separately on this page. There is no laboratory work or investigation in this catalog, and we claim no more than the lessons teach.
• Connecticut's own state structure is taught more fully than any one code captures. Connecticut Civics teaches the Fundamental Orders of 1639 and the Constitution of 1965, the 1960 ABOLITION of county government (a two-tier state-plus-169-towns system found in only a couple of states), the legislative APPOINTMENT of judges (a Judicial Selection Commission screens, the Governor nominates, the General Assembly appoints to 8-year terms), the absence of a statewide citizen initiative, and the recent rollout of early in-person voting (2024) and no-excuse absentee voting — all from Connecticut's own sources. CIV 9–12.1 (powers of local/state institutions) hosts most of the structure, but the Frameworks are C3 CONCEPT standards, not a Connecticut-government checklist, so none of these distinctive Connecticut facts has a code of its own.
• The Civics standards we checked and rejected. CIV 9–12.6 (critique relationships among governments, civil societies, and economic markets), CIV 9–12.7 (apply civic virtues when working with others), CIV 9–12.8 (evaluate systems that promote civic virtues in different contexts, times, and places), CIV 9–12.9 (use appropriate deliberative processes in multiple settings), CIV 9–12.10 (the roles of personal interests and perspectives on civic virtues, democratic principles, constitutional rights, and human rights), CIV 9–12.13 (evaluate public policies for intended and unintended outcomes), and CIV 9–12.14 (analyze historical, contemporary, and emerging means of changing societies and protecting rights) — the courses either do not genuinely teach these or teach them too thinly to claim, so we do not claim them.
• Connecticut's Dimension-1 inquiry standards and the interdisciplinary HIST/ECO/GEO standards. The Frameworks organize each course into the C3 inquiry arc. Dimension 1 (the inquiry skills — developing questions, evaluating sources, communicating conclusions, taking informed action) and the HISTORY, ECONOMICS, and GEOGRAPHY disciplinary standards that appear inside the High School Civics and Government course (HIST 9–12.x, ECO 9–12.x, GEO 9–12.x) are not the civics-content standards we mapped this pass. The catalog's source-literacy method and its commodity history/economics WOULD map to some of them, as they do in other states, but we mapped the CIVICS (CIV 9–12) dimension and defer the rest rather than over-claim.
• Connecticut's 2023 Social Studies Standards — a future re-map. Connecticut adopted new K-12 Social Studies Standards in October 2023 (a distinct document from the 2015 C3 Frameworks mapped here). This pass cites the 2015 Frameworks, which carry the discrete High School Civics and Government course; the 2023 standards are queued for a separate verbatim re-map. As the finder always advises, confirm against your jurisdiction's current requirements.