Science

List of 3 items.

• Sixth Grade Science: Exploration and Discovery

  The sixth grade science course offers a survey of topics in Physics, Chemistry, Environmental Science, and Biology. Through discovery-based inquiry, students learn about energy and energy transfer, simple machines, properties of matter, thermodynamics, weather and climate, food webs, animal and plant cells, specialized body structures, ecosystems and evolution, and natural selection. Students make detailed observations and educated hypotheses as they design and conduct experiments, collect and analyze data, make error calculations, draw conclusions—while always following safety protocols in the lab. Along with classroom lessons and field trips, numerous long and short-termed projects such as the Ideal Climate Map and What is today’s weather like outside? sharpen students’ problem-solving, critical thinking, and reasoning skills.

• Seventh Grade Science: Earth and Planetary Science

  In their second year of Middle School science, students explore the forces involved in shaping our dynamic earth. Topics covered include plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanoes, the rock cycle and minerals, weathering and erosion, the atmosphere and climate, and energy conservation within the earth. Students reinforce and apply concepts learned in classroom lessons to real world tasks such as creating an oceanic map. Frequent discovery-based classroom activities, long and short-termed projects, field trips, and laboratory exercises help inspire interest in scientific inquiry, build critical thinking skills, and refine problem-solving abilities.

• Eighth Grade Science: Physical Science

  In Physical Science, students delve into the fundamentals of Chemistry and Physics. The course includes units on laboratory safety, the physical and chemical structure of matter, atomic theory, the periodic table of elements, inorganic and organic chemical nomenclature, chemical reactions, mechanics, Newton’s Laws, work, energy and simple machines, heat, wave phenomena, sound, light, and electromagnetism. Through hands-on activities, labs, long and short-termed projects, and group work as a means for discovery, students grow as involved, engaged scientific thinkers. In preparation for high school, students learn to produce mature lab reports and to use technology such as computer-based probe-ware, Excel, and other science software programs to analyze data. A Kew-Forest Middle School graduate has learned how to devise critical scientific questions, how to develop experiments to test conjecture, and how to report and analyze the experiment results.