FOSS Curriculum

Boxes and boxes and boxes. OH my!!! 

We have three new FOSS curriculum modules in the
middle school.

FOSS is better known as Full Option Science System. It is a research based K-8 science curriculum developed at the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley. Students learn to appreciate science, as well as learn important scientific and engineering concepts, when they actively participate in their own investigations and analyses. The FOSS program was created specifically to provide students and teachers with meaningful experiences as they engage in active participation of scientific practices.

Follow the link FOSSWeb to learn about FOSS and the middle school curriculum. Highlights of the three new modules are presented below.

The Weather and Water curriculum is designed for 6th graders. It focuses on Earth's atmosphere, weather, and water. Understanding weather is more than reading data from a weather station. Students will study physics and chemistry during their investigations. Students will atoms and molecules, changes of state, and heat transfer before they launch into bigger ideas involving air masses and fronts, convection cells and winds, and the development of severe weather.

The Populations and Ecosystems curriculum is designed for 7th graders. An ecosystem is an organizational unit of life on Earth, defined by a physical environment and the organisms that live there. Organisms depend on their ecosystems in order to live and thrive. Unwelcome or unhealthy changes within an ecosystem can cause a domino effect which could cause death to some organisms. One agent of change in the Earth's ecosystems is humans. It is important that we understand how we effect ecosystems with our actions and technology. This course provides students with the first steps along the path of ecological understanding, with the hope that their future steps will be considered and measured, serving the interests of all life.

The Planetary Science curriculum is designed for 8th graders. Astronomy is the study of everything we observe beyond the Earth. The course focuses on the moon, the sun, the solar system, including the planets, the Milky Way, and the vastness of the cosmos. Concepts studied include the physical moon and its phases, the relationship between the sun and the Earth, the Earth's tilt and the seasons, the scale of the solar system, and space exploration and the search for new planets.