🔬 Grade 9 Science: how to help at home

What each unit covers

1. 🌲Ecosystems in Balance

   How the biosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and atmosphere interact, food webs and the 10% energy rule, the carbon, nitrogen, water and phosphorus cycles, succession and biodiversity, how people change ecosystems, and farming practices that protect soil and water.

2. 🧬Biodiversity & Heredity

   Why variety within and between species helps living things survive, how symbiosis works, sexual and asexual reproduction, the basics of DNA, genes and chromosomes, and how people and nature influence which traits are passed on.

3. 🌱Sustainable Ecosystems

   Practises how human activity affects biodiversity and ecosystems, and issues such as climate change, over-population and clean energy that call for good scientific decisions.

4. ⚛️Inside the Atom

   Protons, neutrons and electrons, how Dalton, Thomson, Rutherford and Bohr's models changed with evidence, atomic and mass numbers, and drawing the electron shells of the first 20 elements.

5. 🧪The Periodic Table

   Groups and periods, metals, non-metals and metalloids, alkali metals, halogens and noble gases, and how valence electrons and shells explain the patterns.

6. 💧Elements & Compounds

   Elements, compounds and mixtures, reading chemical formulas, physical and chemical properties and changes, density, and common household chemicals, including why some should never be mixed.

7. 🧪Electrons & Compounds

   How valence electrons decide whether atoms gain, lose or share electrons, ionic and covalent compounds, and reading simple chemical formulas.

8. ⚗️Chemical Change

   Telling a chemical change from a physical change, reading simple word and symbol equations, why mass is conserved, what speeds a reaction up, exothermic and endothermic changes, and WHMIS safety.

9. ⚡Static Electricity

   Positive and negative charges and the particles behind them, charging by friction, contact and induction, conductors and insulators, and electrical safety in a thunderstorm.

10. 🔌Circuits & Ohm's Law

    Circuit components and their jobs, current, potential difference and resistance with their symbols and SI units, calculating with V = I × R, and how current, voltage and resistance behave in series and parallel circuits.

11. 💡Electrical Energy

    The difference between electricity and electrical energy, energy in joules and kilowatt-hours, cost of electricity, efficiency of devices, and the benefits and challenges of sources such as hydro, wind, solar, nuclear and gas.

12. 🔬How Science Works

    Practises how scientists test predictions: hypotheses, variables, fair tests, bias, peer review, and how models and theories change with evidence.

13. 🌎Science & Society

    Practises weighing the costs and benefits of technologies, spotting unforeseen consequences, taking action on science issues, and linking science to careers and hobbies.

14. 🔎Science or Not Science?

    Practises telling science from pseudoscience and judging what good science looks like, using evidence, testable ideas and fair tests.