Science 4 — Course Syllabus

MATATAG Curriculum · Key Stage 2 · School Year 2026–2027

The three-term school year

The curriculum guide predates this calendar and still assigns content to four quarters. The competencies are unchanged — only their container moved. §4 keeps the guide's own quarter attribution on every row; §5 maps four quarters onto three terms.

1. Course Description

Science 4 opens Key Stage 2. Learners arrive able to observe, predict and measure; they leave able to plan an investigation, control what they change, and say what their evidence supports.

The year moves from what a material is like to what it can become: chemical properties, and changes to materials that are sometimes harmful. It then works through the systems that keep plants and animals alive, the forces that move things and the energy that surrounds them, and the soil, weather and Sun of the learner's own locality.

Two things separate Grade 4 from Grade 3. The first is objectivity — the guide asks repeatedly for open-mindedness and for information drawn from trustworthy secondary sources, not only from what the learner saw. The second is measurement with instruments: a thermometer, a rain gauge, a shadow stick, a ruler and a clock, used to produce numbers somebody else could check.

Everything is anchored locally: the waste at the back of the school, the soil in the garden plot, the weather that decides whether the class walks home dry.

2. Grade Level Standard

Quoted verbatim from the MATATAG Science Curriculum Guide (DepEd, August 2023, page 23).

Grade 4 — At the end of Grade 4, learners describe the chemical properties of materials and that changes to them are sometimes harmful. They identify that plants and animals have systems whose function is to keep them alive. They observe, describe, and create representations to show how living things interact with their habitat, survive, and reproduce. They use diagrams to show the feeding relationship among different organisms. Learners use simple equipment to identify types of soil that hold water and support plant growth. Learners use simple equipment and processes to measure and record data about movement and describe and predict how things around them move. They describe the concepts of speed and force. They recognize that science processes are used to gain deeper understanding about the properties of magnets, light, sound, and heat. Learners apply their developing observation skills and objectivity to identify where energy is evident in their local communities and how it is used by people. They use instruments and secondary sources to measure and describe the characteristics of weather and use the information to make predictions. Learners demonstrate appreciation for the dangers of extreme weather events and use safe practice to protect themselves. Learners use personal observations and reliable secondary information sources to describe the sun and explain its importance to life on Earth. They exhibit objectivity and open-mindedness in gathering information related to environmental issues and concerns in the community.

Key Stage 2 Standard

Quoted from page 21:

At the end of Grade 6, the learners have the essential skills of scientific inquiry — designing simple investigations, using appropriate procedures and tools to gather evidence, observing patterns, determining relationships, drawing conclusions based on evidence, and communicating ideas in varied ways.

3. Content Domains

Two axes, routinely confused with each other.

3.1 The three content strands — what the learner does

Integrated throughout, not taught separately (guide, page 19):

3.2 The four discipline-oriented domains — what is studied

3.3 One quarter, one domain

Each quarter is one domain. The guide prints the table on page 28 and its own phrase for the unit of work is "domain quarters".

Identical for Grades 3 to 6. It changes from Grade 7 — see science-spine.md §2.

4. Content Map

Every entry below is quoted from the official curriculum guide (DepEd, August 2023, pages 33–36), committed at docs/research/source/. Competency numbers are the guide's own and are quarter-relative.

Performance tasks here are the guide's, not this syllabus's. The guide requires "at least one substantial performance task for each quarter" (page 17) and supplies the tasks. This is the opposite of the Mathematics syllabi in this repository, where they are proposals.

CG Quarter 1 — Materials

Taught in Term 1, weeks 1–8

CG Quarter 2 — Living Things

Opens in Term 1 (weeks 9–11); completed in Term 2 (weeks 12–16)

CG Quarter 3 — Force, Motion, and Energy

Opens in Term 2 (weeks 17–22); completed in Term 3 (weeks 23–24)

CG Quarter 4 — Earth and Space

Taught in Term 3, weeks 25–33

5. Term-by-Term Scope and Sequence

Thirty-three instructional weeks. One rule, applied identically to all eight Science grades in this repository:

Quarter 4 gets the extra week because it falls entirely in Term 3, reported at 61 instructional days against 54 and 55.

⚠️ The week mapping is this repository's, not DepEd's. The guide assigns content to quarters and says nothing about weeks. A school's approved Budget of Work replaces every week number below; none has been obtained — see source-catalogue.md. The quarter-to-domain assignment is DepEd's, and is reproduced exactly.

Term 1 — June to September

End-of-term block — Term 1 examination, remediation, reporting.

Term 2 — September to December

End-of-term block — Term 2 examination, remediation, reporting.

Term 3 — January to April

End-of-term block — Term 3 examination, closing activities, reporting.

Coverage check

All 33 CG competencies are placed. None is taught twice, and none is dropped.

6. Assessment and Grading

Per DO No. 015, s. 2026. Science is a Key Stage 2 core learning area:

Performance Tasks are half the grade, and in Science the guide sets them. That is the single biggest practical difference from Mathematics: a Grade 4 Science teacher does not choose the task, and the rubric in assessment.md §6 is written against the guide's wording.

Transmutation is being withdrawn, and this year sits in the middle of it.

⚠️ Reported, not read. DO No. 015, s. 2026 could not be downloaded in the environment these artifacts were built in — see source-catalogue.md. Two independent search passes returned the same 20 / 50 / 30 split. Two passes agreeing is not the order. Confirm before computing a real grade.

Formative assessment used weekly

Not graded — it steers instruction.

• Exit tickets — one question at the end of each session
• The investigation log — the rusting nails are read every day, not opened once on Friday
• The game's Teacher Panel — per-round accuracy; Round 3 is the one that reads
• Error hunts — a planted mistake surfaces misconceptions faster than correct answers do

7. Learner Support

8. Materials

No-cost / recycled — the default. The course runs on these alone.

• Iron nails, bottle caps, tin cans and glass jars
• Vinegar, baking soda, salt and sugar from a kitchen
• Old newspaper, cardboard, plastic and banana peel for the biodegradability trial
• Soil from three places in the school grounds
• Chalk, a board, and a stick for the shadow

If available.

• A projector or television for the deck; any browser device for the game
• A thermometer, a rain gauge and a magnet set
• A hand lens and a balance

DepEd's Grade 4 equipment list is not held here. The guide names weather instruments and "simple equipment" but not what a school is assumed to have. offline-activities.md names the improvisation in every case, including a rain gauge made from a cut bottle.

9. Curriculum Verification — Completed

What opening the guide changed

Part of the E-turo MATATAG artifact set. Companion files: lesson-plan.md · lesson-plan-ilaw.md · assessment.md · offline-activities.md · slides.html · game.html