Delaware 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 Delaware (Common Core) mathematics standard.
• Science: partial claims, through the shared NGSS file. Delaware was an NGSS lead state and the 7th state to adopt the NGSS verbatim (unanimous State Board vote, September 19, 2013), 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.
• Two Civics 9-12 expectations we checked and rejected. Civics Standard Two 9-12 (“examine and analyze the extra-Constitutional role that political parties play in American politics”) is not taught: Delaware Civics teaches the CONSTITUTIONAL major-party balance rule on Delaware's courts, which is the opposite of an extra-Constitutional party analysis. Civics Standard Four 9-12 (“understand the process of working within a political party, a commission engaged in examining public policy, or a citizen's group”) is likewise not taught — the course teaches running for local office and attending public boards, not working inside a party, commission, or advocacy group. The courses do not genuinely teach these, so we do not claim them.
• Economics — Macroeconomics is not taught. Economics Standard Two 9-12 (how economies function as a whole — inflation, unemployment, business cycles, and monetary and fiscal policies) is not taught by this catalog. The BVC economics is microeconomic and trade-focused (commodity prices, value chains, trade barriers), so we claim the Microeconomics, Economic Systems, and International Trade expectations and reject Macroeconomics.
• Geography — Maps (excluded as unverifiable here) and Regions. The Commodity Map itself would map to Geography Standard One (Maps), but that strand's Grades 9-12 expectation is a bulleted, multi-part standard (mapped patterns analyzed through hierarchy, accessibility, diffusion, and complementarity, each with its own parenthetical definition) that we could not reproduce cleanly verbatim in a single entry — verbatim-or-nothing, so we exclude it rather than paraphrase, and note the gap here. Geography Standard Four (Regions) is not genuinely taught. The gap on Maps is in our transcription, not the lessons.
• History — the Content strand's Delaware connection. History Standard Four 9-12 asks for modern United States and world history “and its connections to Delaware history.” The catalog teaches world and U.S. history at real depth, but not Delaware's own history, which the benchmark centers — so we map the History strand's analytical expectations (Chronology, Analysis, Interpretation) and do not claim the Content strand.
• The AI-literacy ladder, the language courses, and Learning How to Learn — deferred, not denied. Delaware's closest frameworks (Computer Science, World Languages) have not been fetched and verified yet. Our rule is fetch-or-don't-cite, so these courses carry no Delaware claims this pass.