8th Grade Integrated Science tells a coherent story that generally includes two or more science disciplines that meaningfully connect with each other within that instructional segment. Earth and Space Science content provides the conceptual “glue” by separately linking with physical science (solar system, orbital motions, and asteroid collisions) and with life science (human impacts on biodiversity and geologic time scale via fossils in rock strata).

Perhaps the most important perspective with respect to Integrated Grade 8 is that it serves as a capstone for the middle school grade span. Many of the key concepts that have been flowing, cycling and building in complexity in the lower grades come together to explain awesome phenomena such as the unity and diversity of Earth’s life, how humans impact and can sustain biodiversity, and the beautiful dances within the solar system. These phenomena are happening within a scale of existence that extends from submicroscopic atoms to clusters of galaxies. These phenomena also occur across a scale of time that extends from instants of collisions to billions of years of stability and change. All this grandeur and wonder would be unknown to us without the powerful science and engineering practices and unifying concepts that students experience and apply in NGSS middle school science.