Middle School Science

6.2 Thermal Energy

Students investigate the different cup features they conjecture are important to explaining the phenomenon, starting with the lid. They model how matter can enter or exit the cup via evaporation However, they find that in a completely closed system, the liquid inside the cup still changes temperature. This motivates the need to trace the transfer of energy into the drink as it warms up. Through a series of lab investigations and simulations, students find that there are two ways to transfer energy into the drink: (1) the absorption of light and (2) thermal energy from the warmer air around the drink. They are then challenged to design their own drink container that can perform as well as the store-bought container, following a set of design criteria and constraints. MS-PS1-4*, MS-PS3-3, MS-PS3-4, MS-PS3-5, MS-PS4-2*, MS-ETS1-4

6.3 Weather, Climate & Water Cycling

The unit starts out with anchoring students in the exploration of a series of videos of hailstorms from different locations across the country at different times of the year. The videos show that pieces of ice of different sizes (some very large) are falling out of the sky, sometimes accompanied by rain and wind gusts, all on days when the temperature of the air outside remained above freezing for the entire day. These cases spark questions and ideas for investigations, such as investigating how ice can be falling from the sky on a warm day, how clouds form, why some clouds produce storms with large amounts of precipitation and others don’t, and how all that water gets into the air in the first place. MS-ESS2-4, MS-ESS2-5, MS-ESS2-6, and MS-PS1-4*

7.3 Metabolic Reactions

This unit on metabolic reactions in the human body starts out with students exploring a real case study of a middle-school girl named M’Kenna, who reported some alarming symptoms to her doctor. Her symptoms included an inability to concentrate, headaches, stomach issues when she eats, and a lack of energy for everyday activities and sports that she used to play regularly. She also reported noticeable weight loss over the past few months, in spite of consuming what appeared to be a healthy diet. Her case sparks questions and ideas for investigations around trying to figure out which pathways and processes in M’Kenna’s body might be functioning differently than a healthy system and why. MS-LS1-3, MS-LS1-5, MS-LS1-7, MS-PS1-1, MS-PS1-2

7.4 Matter Cycling & Photosynthesis

Students figure out that they can trace all food back to plants, including processed and synthetic food. They obtain and communicate information to explain how matter gets from living things that have died back into the system through processes done by decomposers. Students finally explain that the pieces of their food are constantly recycled between living and nonliving parts of a system. MS-LS1-6, MS-LS2-3, and MS-PS1-3

8.2 Sound Waves

In this unit, students develop ideas related to how sounds are produced, how they travel through media, and how they affect objects at a distance. Their investigations are motivated by trying to account for a perplexing anchoring phenomenon — a truck is playing loud music in a parking lot and the windows of a building across the parking lot visibly shake in response to the music. MS-PS4-1, MS-PS4-2

8.3 Forces at a Distance

Students dissect speakers to explore the inner workings, and engineer homemade cup speakers to manipulate the parts of the speaker. They identify that most speakers have the same parts–a magnet, a coil of wire, and a membrane. Students investigate each of these parts to figure out how they work together in the speaker system. Along the way, students manipulate the components (e.g. changing the strength of the magnet, number of coils, direction of current) to see how this technology can be modified and applied to a variety of contexts, like MagLev trains, junkyard magnets, and electric motors. MS-PS2-3, MS-PS2-5, and MS-PS3-2

Chapter 1: Matter—Solids, Liquids, and Gases

Students are introduced to the idea that matter is composed of atoms and molecules that are attracted to each other and in constant motion. Students explore the attractions and motion of atoms and molecules as they experiment with and observe the heating and cooling of a solid, liquid, and gas.

Chapter 2: Changes of State

Students help design experiments to test whether the temperature of water affects the rate of evaporation and whether the temperature of water vapor affects the rate of condensation. Students also look in more detail at the water molecule to help explain the state changes of water.

Chapter 3: Density

Students experiment with objects that have the same volume but different mass and other objects that have the same mass but different volume to develop a meaning of density. Students also experiment with density in the context of sinking and floating and look at substances on the molecular level to discover why one substance is more or less dense than another.

Chapter 4: The Periodic Table & Bonding

Students look more deeply into the structure of the atom and play a game to better understand the relationship between protons, neutrons, electrons, and energy levels in atoms and their location in the periodic table. Students will also explore covalent and ionic bonding.

Chapter 5: The Water Molecule and Dissolving

Students investigate the polarity of the water molecule and design tests to compare water to less polar liquids for evaporation rate, surface tension, and ability to dissolve certain substances. Students also discover that dissolving applies to solids, liquids, and gases.

Chapter 6: Chemical Change

Students explore the concept that chemical reactions involve the breaking of bonds between atoms in the reactants, and the rearrangement and rebonding of these atoms to make the products. Students investigate reactions which produce a gas, form a precipitate, and cause a color change. Students also explore endothermic and exothermic reactions and do an engineering activity to design a device using an exothermic reaction.

How Do Eggs Become Chickens or Other Living Things?

This unit focuses on the role that food, blood, cells, and tissues play in the development of embryos and growth in different animals. Starting off with a series of news reports about the growing prevalence of backyard chicken coops across the country, the unit begins by sparking student questions and ideas for investigations geared toward trying to figure out where babies of chickens come from. Across the unit, students investigate why some chicken eggs hatch while others do not, developing competing models about what goes on inside an egg before it hatches. The investigations students pursue help them figure out answers to their questions and construct explanations regarding how an organism grows and builds new body structures, as well as how the structure of the circulatory system and individual cells support the movement of water, food, and gas molecules needed in these processes. MS-LS1-1, MS-LS1-2, MS-LS1-3, MS-LS4-3 (partial)

Heartworm

In this middle school unit students are exposed to the broad impacts of climate change on populations and ecosystems through a scaffolded series of phenomena and data analysis activities. Framed within a case of an increasing occurrence of a mysterious canine illness in a small town, students take on the role of a veterinary assistant to try to uncover the source of the problem and find a solution for the community. Throughout the unit, there are repeated opportunities for students to contribute to the learning progression through their questions and observations of phenomena and data-rich activities. To better prepare students to ask questions and make connections at the global climate level, mapping and patterns analysis activities start at the local level and increase in scope until the full scale of the origins of the mystery illness are uncovered. Students then return to the local level with new knowledge and take on the role of content experts during the creation of proposed solutions in the fictional town. MS-LS2-2, MS-LS2-4