Middleschool Science

Tons of options for middleschool science -- both structured and non.

Some local resources to check into:

NC Science House (http://www.science-house.org/index.html ) -- they do all sorts of programs both for middleschool students as well as teachers. It might be worth trying to set something up for homeschoolers.

They offer a great resource called LabWrite that helps students/teachers write lab reports -- online or print version: http://www.ncsu.edu/labwrite/ This might be worth working through for a few official labs that we should do this year. They offer tutorials for standard labs, descriptive labs and student-designed labs (great for science fairs!). Under resources, there are many graphical/data type resources -- when to graph, when to use tables. There is also a small section specifically tied to Middleschool lab writing.

A middleschool text reviewer tied to the Science House is:
http://www.science-house.org/middleschool/index.html (last updated 5/2008). It sounds like the Science House has lots of different resources to look at. Would they do a "show and tell" of Middleschool science programs for homeschool parents? (The reviewer: John Hubisz) seems supportive of homeschoolers and said he's answered lots of homeschool inquiries.)

One of his good reviews was for CPO Science texts. (BTW: Part of a 4-company group that has middleschool resources -- should get a catalog but server was down this morning:
http://www.schoolspecialtyscience.com/ -- group includes CPO Science, Delta Education, Frey Scientific and Neo/SCI). Most of CPO's stuff focuses on Investigative Science where kids do activities to explore the different science topics.

Reading level (but Physical Science with Earth/Space might be good for Gr 7/8)
CPO Focus on Earth Science: Grade 6
CPO Focus on Life Science: Grade 7
CPO Focus on Physical Science: Grade 8
Foundations of Physical Science: grades 8-10
Foundations of Physical Science with Earth and Space Science: grades 8-10
Introduction to Earth and Space Science: grades 8-10
Integrated Physics and Chemistry: grades 8-10
Foundations of Physics: grades 10-12 and non-physics-major college students

Atom Building Game: http://www.cpo.com/sc_atombuilding.shtml
A very thorough approach (including electron shells) for talking about atoms and the periodic table. The game is $85 plus a teacher's manual -- but would work great if it was a 2 month class (or some such thing) for upper middleschoolers or lower highschoolers.

This comes from a series of supplemental material that looks good. Could this be used for 6 week science units for middleschool? (worth the $?)
http://www.cpo.com/sc_gallery.shtml

(NOTE: Lots of good links on the Middleschool Science Text Review website above)

Also, worth thinking about is how we talk about science to our kids and the fallacies/myths that are perpetrated throughout the texts and "dumbing down" of science in attempt to make it accessible to kids. This website has some examples of "Bad Science":
http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/BadScience.html

Other options:
Environthon: http://www.envirothon.org (but does it need to be a competition?)

AND NCSU's Chemistry Dept has an Outreach program:
http://www.ncsu.edu/chemistry/outreach/