Science

Throughout the middle school science program, students learn to communicate, collaborate and explore as scientists and engineers through an integrated approach to scientific understanding.

The science program aims to instill an awareness and understanding of the natural world and a love for scientific inquiry. The science units use a science storyline approach, which gives students a learning experience grounded by the students’ own desire to explain what they don’t understand. Storylines are sequenced lessons that encourage students to answer their own questions in order to figure out a piece of a science idea. The initial science idea presented to students is referred to as a scientific or real-world phenomenon. Students use science talk to make sense of these phenomena. Their talk in the form of words and drawings progresses from making sense of their own thinking to deepening their reasoning, which depends on how students think with others. Teachers and students work together to figure things out as a community of learners—just as scientists do in the real world.

Grounded in these processes of students making sense of phenomena and solving problems, the Next Generation Science Standards set the expectations for what students should know, do and understand:

Disciplinary ideas:

Molecules to organisms
Ecosystems
Heredity
Biological evolution
Earth’s place in the universe
Earth’s systems
Earth and human activity
Matter and its interactions
Forces and interactions
Energy
Waves

Science and engineering practices:

Asking questions and defining problems
Developing and using models
Planning and carrying out investigations
Analyzing and interpreting data
Using mathematics and computational thinking
Constructing explanations and designing solutions
Engaging in argument from evidence
Obtaining, evaluating and communicating information

Crosscutting concepts:

Patterns
Cause and effect
Scale, proportion and quantity
Systems and system models
Energy and matter
Structure and function
Stability and change