Vermont 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:

• Vermont has NO state-specific social-studies code — it adopted the national C3 Framework. This is the honest heart of Vermont's page. Vermont does not publish its own detailed social-studies standards or codes; in 2017 the Vermont State Board of Education adopted the national College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework (NCSS, 2013) as Vermont's social-studies standards. So — unlike Rhode Island (whose SSHS.CVC.4.5 names Rhode Island and the Narragansett) or Michigan (whose C3.2 names state, local, and tribal governments) — there is NO Vermont-specific standard that names Vermont's own government. The C3 civics indicators we cite (D2.Civ.1, D2.Civ.5, D2.Civ.11) are GENERAL and reach “local” and “state” institutions, which is where the flagship's Vermont-structure lessons map; the depth on Vermont's 2-year terms, its majority-vote-or-the-Legislature-decides rule, its legislative judicial retention, Town Meeting Day, and its lack of a statewide initiative is in the course, not in any Vermont code. We do not invent Vermont codes to fill the gap.
• Mathematics — nothing. This catalog does no mathematics instruction, so it meets no Vermont Common Core mathematics standard.
• Science: partial claims, through the shared NGSS file. Vermont was an NGSS Lead State and adopted the NGSS in 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.
• Tribal, national, and international levels named in the C3 civics indicators. D2.Civ.1, D2.Civ.5, D2.Civ.11, and D2.Civ.12 each name tribal, national, and/or international institutions and laws alongside local and state ones. Vermont Civics teaches Vermont's own state and local government (and the BVC/federal courses teach the national level), but the courses do not teach tribal governments or international institutions, so each of those indicators is claimed as PARTIAL with the gap called out on the entry, never stretched to full.
• The C3 Framework's Dimensions 1, 3, and 4 — deferred, not denied. This pass maps the C3 Framework's Dimension 2 disciplinary indicators (Civics, Economics, Geography, History), which decoded cleanly and were verified verbatim. Dimension 1 (Developing Questions and Planning Inquiries), Dimension 3 (Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence), and Dimension 4 (Communicating Conclusions and Taking Informed Action) — the inquiry arc the catalog's source-literacy and Coffee-project research would also map to — were not separately retrieved verbatim this pass. Our rule is fetch-and-verify-or-don't-cite, so they are deferred rather than mapped from memory.
• C3 Dimension 2 indicators we checked and did not claim. Within the disciplines we did map, the indicators the courses do not genuinely teach are not claimed: in Civics, D2.Civ.3 (constitutions, laws, and treaties on maintaining national/international order), D2.Civ.6 (relationships among governments, civil societies, and markets), D2.Civ.7-D2.Civ.10 (civic virtues, deliberative processes, and democratic principles as dispositions), and D2.Civ.13 (public policy in terms of intended/unintended outcomes) beyond the economic-policy angle already claimed under D2.Eco.7; in Economics, the personal-finance, national-economy, and monetary/fiscal-policy indicators (D2.Eco.1-2, D2.Eco.5-6, D2.Eco.8-13, D2.Eco.15) and comparative advantage by name (D2.Eco.14); in Geography, the geospatial-technology, settlement, and globalization indicators (D2.Geo.1-2, D2.Geo.5-8, D2.Geo.10-12); and in History, the historiography, sourcing, and argument indicators the courses touch but do not systematically teach (e.g., D2.His.1-5, D2.His.7-10, D2.His.12-13, D2.His.15, D2.His.17). The gap is in the catalog, not the framework.
• The AI-literacy ladder, the language courses, and Learning How to Learn — deferred, not denied. Vermont's closest frameworks for these (its educational-technology / computer-science and world-languages guidance) have not been fetched and verified yet. Our rule is fetch-or-don't-cite, so these courses carry no Vermont claims this pass.