Science
In Science, we will continue to use the FOSS program (Full Option Science System).
"Science is a discovery activity, a process for producing and applying new knowledge. The best way for students to appreciate the scientific enterprise, learn important science and engineering concepts, and develop the ability to think well is to actively participate in scientific practices through their own investigations and analyses. FOSS was created to engage students and teachers with meaningful experiences in the natural and designed worlds." - FOSS Program Goals
Study guides will be distributed one week before tests. Students are responsible for note-taking in their science notebooks. This will also help them prepare for tests.
Below are the 3 units we will be completing this year:
Earth Science: Soils, Rocks, and Landforms
The Soils, Rocks, and Landforms Module provides students with firsthand experiences with soils and rocks and modeling experiences using tools such as topographic maps and stream tables to engage with the anchor phenomenon of the surface of Earth’s landscape—the shape and the composition of landforms. The driving questions for the module are What are Earth’s land surface made of? and Why are landforms not the same everywhere?
Physical Science: Energy
The Energy Module provides firsthand experiences in physical science dealing with the anchor phenomenon of energy. The five investigations focus on the concepts that energy is present whenever there is motion, electric current, sound, light, or heat, and that energy can transfer from one place to other. The guiding question for the module is how does energy transfer between systems?
Life Science: Environments
The Environments Module has four investigations that focus on the anchor phenomenon that animals and plants interact with their environment and with each other. The driving question for the module deals with structure and function—How do the structures of an organism allow it to survive in its environment? Students design investigations to study preferred environments, range of tolerance, and optimum conditions for growth and survival of specific organisms, both terrestrial and aquatic. Students conduct controlled experiments by incrementally changing specific environmental conditions to determine the range of tolerance for early growth of seeds and hatching of brine shrimp, and use these data to develop and use models to understand the impact of changes to the environment. Students explore how animals use their sense of hearing and develop models for detecting and interpreting sound. They graph and interpret data from multiple trials of experiments and build explanations from evidence. Students gain experiences that will contribute to the understanding of crosscutting concepts of patterns; cause and effect; scale, proportion, and quantity; systems and system models; energy and matter; structure and function; and stability and change.