🔬 8th grade Science

Units

1. Unit 1

   🌈Light & Radiation

   Wavelength and frequency, the electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves to gamma rays and what each is used for, reflection, refraction and color, and staying safe from UV radiation.

   Learning standard: MS-PS4-1; MS-PS4-2 · wave properties and how light reflects, refracts and is absorbed

2. Unit 2

   🔬Cells & Life Processes

   The cell theory, what organelles do in plant and animal cells, how photosynthesis and respiration are connected, osmosis, and how cells form tissues, organs and organ systems.

   Learning standard: MS-LS1-2; MS-LS1-7 · the parts of a cell, and how photosynthesis and cellular respiration store and release energy

3. Unit 3

   🏎️Motion, Forces & Newton’s Laws

   Practices speed, velocity, acceleration, forces, friction, gravity and Newton's three Laws of Motion, with stability. It follows the Grade 8 science skill descriptors on motion and stability and the Laws of Motion in the New Brunswick curriculum.

   Learning standard: MS-PS2-1; MS-PS2-2 · Newton's laws, forces and changes in motion

4. Unit 4

   🎢Kinetic & Potential Energy

   Practices how kinetic energy depends on mass and speed, how potential energy changes with position, and how energy transfers change an object's motion.

   Learning standard: MS-PS3-1; MS-PS3-2 · kinetic energy, mass and speed, and potential energy and position

5. Unit 5

   🧲Fields & Forces at a Distance

   Practices forces that act without touching: what affects electric and magnetic force strength, why gravity is always attractive and depends on mass, and how fields store energy.

   Learning standard: MS-PS2-3; MS-PS2-4; MS-PS2-5 · electric, magnetic and gravitational forces that act at a distance

6. Unit 6

   🧬Genes & Heredity

   Practices how genes on chromosomes code for proteins that shape traits, how mutations can be harmful, helpful or neutral, and how sexual and asexual reproduction differ in passing on genes.

   Learning standard: MS-LS3-1; MS-LS4-5 · genes and mutations, and technologies that influence inheritance

7. Unit 7

   🦎Natural Selection

   Practices how variation in traits leads some individuals to survive and reproduce more, how populations change over generations, and how artificial selection works.

   Learning standard: MS-LS4-4; MS-LS4-6 · how trait variation affects survival and how populations change over time

8. Unit 8

   🦕Earth's History

   Practices using rock strata to organize Earth's 4.6-billion-year history, reading patterns in the fossil record, and comparing body structures for evidence of common ancestry, with the rock layers and sea fossils of New York's gorges as examples.

   Learning standard: MS-ESS1-4; MS-LS4-1; MS-LS4-2 · rock strata and Earth's history, the fossil record, and anatomical evidence of common ancestry

9. Unit 9

   🪐Space Systems

   Practices modeling the Earth-sun-moon system (phases, eclipses and seasons), the role of gravity in the solar system and galaxy, and the scale of objects in the solar system.

   Learning standard: MS-ESS1-1; MS-ESS1-2; MS-ESS1-3 · the Earth-sun-moon system, gravity in the solar system, and its scale

10. Unit 10

    📡Digital & Analog Signals

    Practices the difference between analog signals (smooth, changing waves) and digital signals (separate values such as 0s and 1s), and the evidence that digital signals encode and send information more reliably, from copying music to radio signals from space probes.

    Learning standard: MS-PS4-3 · digital signals are a more reliable way to encode and send information than analog signals

11. Unit 11

    🐣Clues from Embryos

    Practices comparing pictures and descriptions of embryos across species (tails and gill-like folds in fish, chicks and people) and structures with the same origin, like a bat's wing and a human arm, to find relationships that are hard to see in the adult animals.

    Learning standard: MS-LS4-3; MS-LS4-2 · patterns of similarity in embryos and in body structures that show how species are related