Ms. Picciola

Science - Explorers

March 14th, 2025

The Mars Colony Projects have come to an end! The students made some amazing, creative, and unique designs. Ask your child to share details with you!

We have started our final unit of the school year, Weather and Climate. This trimester we will be piloting a new resource, Savvas. We would love any and all feedback throughout the process of this pilot, so if your students share any details with you, please share with us as well. We want to ensure we are making the best decision moving forward with the resources we use and adopt.

February 14th, 2025

8th grade science has concluded our space unit with an engaging week, watching the movie Interstellar! As a continuation of this unit, students will now transition into the Mars Colony Project. In this project, students will collaborate within their lab groups to design and construct a habitable colony on Mars. The project will result in the creation of a physical model of their colony. We are excited to share more details as students begin their work next week.

Additionally, we would like to remind you that the Illinois Science Assessment will take place on March 3rd, 4th, and 6th. To ensure students are well-prepared for this assessment, they have been participating in practice tests during class to familiarize themselves with the question formats and wording. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the state assessment, please feel free to reach out to me. 

January 17, 2025

8th grade science has been continuing with our Space Systems unit. We are half-way through! Students recently completed a CER explaining the role of gravity within our solar system. We also took part in some fun model activities to help grasp the size and distant comparisons of the planets within our solar system. Next week, we will be focusing in on the Earth-Sun-Moon system. Students will be learning about the sun & moon's path in the sky, moon phases, including eclipses. 

December 6, 2024

After a week of working hard on engineering our Ferris Wheel Design & Engineer Challenge - students have created some amazing projects! There are some really creative and well-structured designs, that took a lot of trial and error, collaboration, and hard work to create. 

We have officially started our second unit of 8th grade science, Space Systems. We had a lot of fun using our VR goggles to explore an ISS Space Mission the other day. Next week, we are starting by learning about the different tools that are used to explore our universe and will soon be leading into learning about the role of gravity within our solar system. 

October 11th, 2024

Students have continued to investigate different types of waves, focused mostly on sound and light waves. We have completed many different hands on labs investigating how these waves interact with different media and matter. Students created two different types of instruments to produce and manipulate sound waves by altering the wavelength and frequency. Students then were able to maniulate and test different light waves and how they interact with matter to see if it would absorb, reflect, refract or transmit. They collected data on their findings to then complete a CER about how they saw light interact with different objects. Students will complete a summative CER next week Tuesday 10/15 on how light waves interact with matter and our waves summative exam will be on 10/22. 

I have included some pictures from when students were making and testing their panpipe instruments!

August 29, 2024

Happy 8th Grade Year!!
We have been off to a strong start! We have been spending some time getting to know one another and familiarize ourselves with the science classroom expectations. We've had some fun with a couple STEM challenges and began setting up our science binders for our first unit, Waves.