Middle School Science
Middle School science at Flagstaff Academy is all about experimentation, hands-on exploration, and learning through successes and failures.
Sixth Grade Science
Sixth grade science employs a creative approach to studying the natural world and its phenomena. Students engage in a wide variety of projects and activities that emphasize curiosity and exploration, as well as utilizing creative skills to demonstrate expertise. Students cover a wide variety of topics throughout the year including:
- Heat and energy exchange: forms of energy and how to generate energy in various ways
- Weather and climate: atmosphere, the ocean, recording weather, causes of weather, predicting weather, climate and climate change
- Earth processes: rocks, the rock cycle, the Earth’s layers, and plate tectonic theory
- Natural hazards: volcanoes, earthquakes, weather, and floods
- Light and matter: electromagnetic waves and characteristics of light
- Cells and systems: cell structure and function, cell division, organs/organ systems
- Human body: circulatory and lymphatic systems, immune system, bacterial and viral disease, vaccines, communicable/non-communicable disease, and epidemics.
Seventh Grade Science
In seventh grade, students learn the basics of chemistry, including bonds, types of matter, and chemical reactions. This foundational coverage of chemistry prepares students for more advanced physical science courses in high school. This area of study closes with an application of chemical reactions in the human body with the discussion of metabolic reactions.
The second half of the school year is heavily focused on life science, covering topics such as photosynthesis, matter cycling and ecosystem dynamics. Students end the year by learning about natural resources and the impact humans have on our planet.
Eighth Grade Science
Students begin eighth grade science with an egg drop lab. For the lab, students must create a structure for their egg that is gravity-proof. The eggs are then placed in their structures and dropped from the top of the Flagstaff Academy roof. It's always great fun to see whose egg survived the fall.
Throughout the year, students study energy, forces, waves, electricity, light, density and buoyancy, and chemical reactions in food. For each area of study, students participate in at least one hands-on lab that lets them experiment in a safe and controlled environment.
To prepare students for high school, the eighth grade science and language arts teachers follow the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) teaching model. CER is a writing strategy that helps students make connections with science concepts and labs.