Vermont standards alignment

• HS-ESS1-3

  Covered

  Communicate scientific ideas about the way stars, over their life cycle, produce elements.

  Covered by

  • How We Know What's Out There

  • · 7 · Reading a star: the HR diagram
  • · 13 · What stars make

  Note: Lesson 13 is this expectation. It gives the mechanism without equations (hydrogen to helium, heavier elements as the core contracts and heats, the stop at iron because fusion past it no longer releases net energy, and the extreme conditions of stellar death for what comes after), and then sets out the four independent lines of evidence that support it. Communicating the idea IS the lesson, which is why this one is full rather than partial.

• HS-ESS2-2

  Partially covered

  Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth's surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.

  Covered by

  • The River and the Watershed

  • · 2 · Where a river's water comes from
  • · 6 · Sediment, and what a dam does to it
  • · 9 · Why the oxygen runs out
  • · 10 · A thousand miles of nitrogen

  What we do and don't cover: The best NGSS fit in the catalog for a feedback argument. The River and the Watershed is built out of them: paving a watershed raises flood peaks AND lowers baseflow through one mechanism (lesson 2); a dam trapping sediment starves the channel below and stops resupplying the delta a thousand miles away (lesson 6); fertiliser on an Indiana field ends as an oxygen-depleted zone in the Gulf (lessons 9 and 10). PARTIAL because of the first verb: the learner ANALYZES geoscience data only in the capstone, where they read a USGS gauge record and an EPA impairment listing for their own watershed. The lessons supply the analysis; the student repeats it once.

• HS-ESS2-5

  Partially covered

  Plan and conduct an investigation of the properties of water and its effects on Earth materials and surface processes.

  Covered by

  • The River and the Watershed

  • · 5 · The river shapes the land
  • · 6 · Sediment, and what a dam does to it
  • · 9 · Why the oxygen runs out

  What we do and don't cover: PARTIAL, and the gap is the entire first half of the sentence. The CONTENT is taught directly and at length: water's properties drive erosion and deposition, meanders, cut banks and point bars (lesson 5), sediment transport and what a dam does to it (lesson 6), and density stratification, which is why the Gulf hypoxic zone persists through the summer (lesson 9). But the learner never PLANS AND CONDUCTS AN INVESTIGATION. There is no laboratory work in this catalog and no fieldwork is required to finish this course. If your science requirement is assessed on students conducting investigations, this contributes and does not discharge. Course 4 of this track teaches how to design one; running it is still the student's own project.

• HS-ESS1-2

  Partially covered

  Construct an explanation of the Big Bang theory based on astronomical evidence of light spectra, motion of distant galaxies, and composition of matter in the universe.

  Covered by

  • How We Know What's Out There

  • · 5 · Light itself
  • · 11 · Redshift and an expanding universe
  • · 12 · The Hubble tension
  • · 16 · Capstone: trace a number down the ladder

  What we do and don't cover: The strongest CONTENT match in this catalog: the performance expectation names light spectra, the motion of distant galaxies, and the composition of matter, and those are lessons 5, 11 and 13 of How We Know What's Out There. PARTIAL, and the missing piece is the practice rather than the content: the course supplies and examines the evidence, and the student is asked to construct an explanation only in the graded capstone, where they trace a published number down the chain of inference. If your science requirement is assessed on the three-dimensional NGSS performance, this contributes to it and does not discharge it.

• HS-ESS1-1

  Partially covered

  Develop a model based on evidence to illustrate the life span of the sun and the role of nuclear fusion in the sun's core to release energy that eventually reaches Earth in the form of radiation.

  Covered by

  • How We Know What's Out There

  • · 7 · Reading a star: the HR diagram
  • · 13 · What stars make

  What we do and don't cover: PARTIAL, and the gap is the verb. Fusion as the sun's energy source and the arc of a star's life are taught (lessons 7 and 13, via the main sequence and stellar evolution), but the student never DEVELOPS A MODEL, which is the performance the expectation actually requires. Do not round this up.

• HS-ESS3-1

  Partially covered

  Construct an explanation based on evidence for how the availability of natural resources, occurrence of natural hazards, and changes in climate have influenced human activity.

  Covered by

  • BVC: Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • BVC: Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • BVC: Kava — The Root of Peace

  • · Ep 1 · Climate Change Is Redrawing the Map
  • · Ep 3 · A Two-Degree Threat
  • · Ep 6 · Why Volcanic Soil Only
  • · Ep 10 · Karst Limestone and Bourbon
  • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option B, assess a producing country's climate viability and defend the assessment

  What we do and don't cover: Read this one carefully before you rely on it. This is NOT a science course, it has no laboratory work, no investigations and no scientific modelling. What it does have is precisely the content of HS-ESS3-1: resource availability and climate change shaping what humans do and where. The lessons supply the evidence; the STUDENT constructs the explanation only in the Coffee project (Option B). If your science requirement is assessed on the three-dimensional NGSS performance, this contributes to it, it does not discharge it.

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 — one partial claim, via the shared NGSS file. Vermont was an NGSS Lead State and adopted the NGSS in 2013, so our one honest science claim — HS-ESS3-1, partial — comes through the shared NGSS mapping with the limit stated on the entry. There is no laboratory work, investigation, or modelling in this catalog, and we will not claim more.
• 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.