8th Grade Course Content

Course Content 2013-2014

In the fall students will learn about the Populations and Ecosystems.  This unit explores ecosystems as the largest organizational unit of life on Earth, defined by its physical environment and the organisms that live within it. Students will learn that every organism has a role to play in its ecosystem and has structures and behaviors that allow it to survive. Students will raise populations of organisms to discover population dynamics and interactions over a range of conditions. They will also learn about reproduction, including limiting factors, heredity and natural selection as ways to understand both the similarity and the variation within and between species. The unit is broken down into 10 investigations.

Investigation 1: Milkweed Bugs
Investigation 2: Sorting Out Life
Investigation 3: Miniecosystems
Investigation 4: Mono Lake
Investigation 5: Finding the Energy
Investigation 6: Population Size
Investigation 7: Ecoscenarios
Investigation 8: Adaptations
Investigation 9: Genetic Variation
Investigation 10: Natural Selection

Students in the spring will learn about Catastrophic Events.  Each lesson in this unit builds on skills and concepts presented in previous lessons. As students’ progress through the module, they take greater responsibility for their own learning, eventually planning and conducting their own procedures, devising their own data tables, and analyzing the results they obtain.   The Catastrophic Events unit is organized into three parts:

1. Storms

2. Earthquakes
3. Volcanoes.

Throughout both semesters students will also learn about the scientific method and will be able to write hypotheses and procedures, plan and conduct scientific experiments, record and analyze experimental data and draw solid conclusions based upon the scientific data obtained.

http://www.fossweb.com/
http://www.carolinacurriculum.com/STC/Middle+School/Catastrophic+Events/index.asp