At North View Middle School we believe that teaching and learning approaches should accommodate the diverse skills, abilities, and prior knowledge of young adolescents, cultivate multiple intelligences, draw upon students’ individual learning styles, and utilize digital tools. When learning experiences capitalize on students’ cultural, experiential, and personal backgrounds, new concepts are built on knowledge students already possess. To ensure this happens, we use the nature of young adolescents to guide our instructional decision-making.

Because of this belief, our teachers spend a considerable creating engaging learning opportunities. These opportunities occur in all classes and today I would like to use this post to highlight science.

6th and 8th grade Earth Science:

At the end of April, students embarked on a mission  to create an emergency response plan for a community living near an active volcano.  This plan included the completion of a brochure that outlined the precautions and preparations the community should take before, during and after a volcanic eruption. Creativity was encouraged.  Many of our students went above and beyond when creating their brochures.  They were beautiful. A few examples are below. Be sure to click each photo for a closer look.

Bruce: 

Jady:

7th Grade Life Science

At the beginning of May, students started their last unit on Ecology. Ecology is the study of how living things interact with their environment. We studied the Levels of Ecology, the 6 major Biomes found around the world, Symbiotic Relationships between animals and how Energy Flows within an ecosystem. See the animal brochures for more information on all of these topics!

Lucas:

Musa:

I hope you enjoyed this spotlight. If you have any questions about this or anything else related to North View Middle School please connect with me here or follow me at @NVMSPrincipal. 

At North View Middle School we believe that teaching and learning approaches should accommodate the diverse skills, abilities, and prior knowledge of young adolescents, cultivate multiple intelligences, draw upon students’ individual learning styles, and utilize digital tools. When learning experiences capitalize on students’ cultural, experiential, and personal backgrounds, new concepts are built on knowledge students already possess. To ensure this happens, we use the nature of young adolescents to guide our instructional decision making.

Because of this belief, our teachers spend a considerable creating engaging learning opportunities. These opportunities occur in all classes and today I would like to use this post to highlight science. The first unit of instruction I would like you to learn more about is from our sixth grade Science classrooms.

 Our students are in the fifth week of a five week unit covering “How do scientists conduct experiments?”. The key concepts studied are:

• The Scientific Method is a way of conducting experiments?
• How to measure using International System of Units?
• How to collect and share data?

Our seventh grade students are in the second week of a three week unit covering “The Characteristics of Life”. The key concepts being studied are:

• Explaining the six characteristics organisms must have to be considered “living” and determining if an organism is living based off of those characteristics.
• Determining how scientists group all living things. What are the 5 kingdoms all living things fit into?
• Comparing and contrasting living things. What characteristics do they share? What makes them different?

Lastly, our eighth grade students are in the third week of a four week unit covering, “Engineering and the Design process”. The key concepts being studied are:

• How engineering and technology impact the changing world we live in.
• What the design process is and how we use it.
• How patterns and predictions impact the design process.
• How our culture impacts our ideas.

I hope you enjoyed this spotlight. If you have any questions about this or anything else related to North View Middle School please connect with me here or follow me at @NVMSPrincipal.