Middle School Science
Adopted 6-8 Science Curriculum
Amplify Science is the adopted Science curriculum for grades K-8 in Seattle Public Schools. The Amplify Science instructional model allows students to access their prior knowledge to connect past learning experiences to the present and emphasizes the use of evidence-based reasoning for scientific explanations and engineering solutions in order to communicate recommendations to address real world problems.
Each unit is constructed as a compelling storyline which begins by engaging learners in a puzzling, relevant scientific phenomenon or engineering problem. Learn more about the unit phenomena and storylines for grades 6-8 below:
Grade 6 Units
As microbiological researchers, students must figure out why a fecal transplant cured a patient suffering from a deadly C.difficile infection. In the process they learn about cells and about interactions among organisms.
Duration: 10 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- LS1-1: Living Things Made of Cells
- LS2-1: Resources and Populations
- LS2-2: Ecosystem Relationships
Students take on the role of medicalresearchers, anddiagnose a patient whose body systems aren’t working. They learn about cellular respiration and how body systems work together to get molecules to the cells.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- LS1-3: Body Systems
- LS1-7: Cellular Respiration
- LS1-1: Living Things Made of Cells
- LS1-8: Sensory Receptors
- LS1-2: Cell Parts
As food engineer interns, students apply their knowledge of human metabolism. as well as engineering and design concepts, to design a recipe for an energy bar that meets the needs of populations in areas devastated by natural disasters.
10 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- ETS1-1: Criteria and Constraints
- ETS1-3: Analyzing Results
- ETS1-2: Evaluating Solutions
- ETS1-4: Modeling and Iterative Testing
- LS1-7: Cellular Respiration
- LS1-5: Growth
In their role as thermal scientists, students evaluate competing proposals for heating a school, applying what they learn about matter, energy, and temperature.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- PS3-3: Thermal Energy Transfer
- PS3-4: Energy and Temperature
- PS1-1: Atomic Theory/Molecules
- PS3-5: Motion and Energy Transfer
As climatologists, students must explain the pattern of temperature changes in El Niño years, which are impacting agriculture around the Pacific. They learn about how sunlight, ocean, and atmosphere interact to produce regional climate.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- ESS2-6: Climate Patterns
Students play the role of forensic meteorologists who must explain why powerful storms have increased after a manmade lake was built. They learn how air masses, water, and energy from the Sunproduce weather phenomena
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- ESS2-4: The Water Cycle
- ESS2-5: Air Masses
- ESS3-2: Natural Hazards
In their role as climatologists, students must explain why Earth’s ice is melting. They learn about how changes in the atmosphere are affecting the energy balance in the Earth’s system, and about humans’ role in these changes.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- ESS3-5: Factors for Global Temperature
- ESS3-3: Designs to Minimize Impact
- ESS3-1: Distribution of Natural Resources
- ESS3-4: Human population
- ESS3-2: Natural Hazards
As civil engineering interns, students apply design and engineering concepts as they create a plan for making changes to building rooftops. Their goal is to make a city more energy efficient, and thus reduce the carbon dioxide produced from combustion.
10 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- ETS1-1: Criteria and Constraints
- ETS1-3: Analyzing Results
- ETS1-2: Evaluating Solutions
- ETS1-4: Modeling and Iterative Testing
- ESS3-3: Designs to Minimize Impact
- ESS3-5:Factorsfor Global Temperature
Working as biomedical scientists, students investigate the causes of surprising variation in spider silk flexibility. Students learn why organisms – even parents. offspring, and siblings – vary in their traits.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- LS3-1: Gene, Protein, Trait. & Mutation
- LS3-2: Sexual Vs.Asexual Reproduction
- LS1-1: Living Things Made of CellsLS4-5 Artificial Selection & Genetic Engineering
- LS1-2: Cell PartsLS1-4: Behaviors & Structures; Reproduction
- LS1-5: Growth
Grade 7 Units
As planetary geologists, students analyze data about geoscience processes on the surface of Mars in order to decide whether Mars could have been habitable.
10 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- ESS1-3: Scale in the Solar System
- ESS2-2: Earth’s Processes
Students play the role of geologists trying to explain the concentration of gold in certain parts of the seafloor. They use fossil evidence to support an explanation involving plate motion.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- ESS2-3: Evidence for Plate Motion
- ESS1-4: Strata and Earth Age
- ESS2-2: Earth’s Processes
- ESS3-1: Distribution of Natural Resources
In their role as geohazards engineering interns, students design a tsunami warning system. They apply ideas about plate motion and natural hazards as well as engineering and design concepts.
10 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- ETS1-1: Criteria and Constraints
- ETS1-3: Analyzing Results
- ETS1-2: Evaluating Solutions
- ETS1-4: Modeling and Iterative Testing
- ESS3-2: Natural Hazards
- ESS2-2: Earth’s Processes
- ESS2-3: Evidence for Plate Motion
- ESS3-1: Distribution of Natural Resources
- ESS1-4: Strata and Earth Age
As geologists, students investigate the mystery of how 2-billion-year-old sand grains could be found on an island that formed only 9millionyearsago.They apply ideas about cycling of Earth materials.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- ESS2-1: Earth’s Materials
- ESS2-2: Earth’s Processes Reproduction
- LS1-5: Growth
Students, in their role as student chemists, investigate the mystery of disappearing methane lakes on Saturn’s moon, Titan. They must apply what they learn about phase change, matter, and energy.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- PS1-4: Phase Change
- PS3-4: Energy and Temperature
- PS1-1: Atomic Theory/Molecules
- PS3-5: Motion and Energy Transfer
As chemical engineering interns, students design and test plans for an incubator for premature and low birth weight babies, applying ideas about phase change and the engineering and design process.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- ETS1-1: Criteria and Constraints
- ETS1-3: Analyzing Results
- ETS1-2: Evaluating Solutions ETS1-4: Modeling and Iterative Testing
- PS1-4: Phase Change
- PS3-3: Thermal Energy Transfer
Students play the role of forensic chemists, applying what they learn about matter and chemical reactions to solve the mystery of mysterious substances appearing in a county’s water supply.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- PS1-1: Atomic Theory/Molecules
- PS1-2: Chemical Reactions
- PS1-5: Atoms Conserved
- PS1-3: Synthetic Materials
- LS1-6: Photosynthesis
- PS1-6: Thermal Energy & Chemical Processes
- LS1-7: Cellular Respiration
In their role as biologists, students work to uncover the cause of the moon jelly population explosion in Glacier Sea. They learn about how organisms interact in an ecosystem to get the resources they need.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- LS2-1: Resources and Populations
- LS2-2: Ecosystem Relationships
- LS2-4: Changes Affect PopulationsLS2-5: Ecosystem Services
- LS1-4: Behaviors & Structures; Reproduction
Students act as ecologists to investigate a failed biodome. In the process they learn about how matter, carbon in particular, flows through biotic and abiotic components of an ecosystem.
10 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- LS1-6: Photosynthesis
- LS2-3: Flow of Energy and Cycling of Matter
- LS1-2: Cell Parts
- LS2-5: Ecosystem Services
- LS2-4: Changes Affect Populations
Grade 8 Units
In their role as energy scientists, students learn about energy transfer and conversion as they design a system to power the electronic devices of rescue workers.
10 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- PS3-5: Motion and Energy Transfer
- PS1-3: Synthetic Materials
- PS3-1: Kinetic Energy: Mass & Speed
- PS3-2: Potential Energy and Non-Touching Forces
As student physicists at the fictional Universal Space Agency, students must analyze what went wrong in a space station docking failure. To do so, they need to apply what they learn about forces, changes in motion, and collisions.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- PS2-1: Newton’s 3rd Law (Equal & Opposite Forces)
- PS2-2: Sum of Forces
- PS3-1: Kinetic Energy: Mass & Speed
- PS3-5: Motion and Energy Transfer
As mechanical engineering interns, students apply ideas about force and motion, as well as engineering and design concepts, to design supply pods to be dropped in disaster areas.
10 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- ETS1-1: Criteria and Constraints
- ETS1-3: Analyzing Results
- ETS1-2: Evaluating Solutions
- ETS1-4: Modeling and Iterative Testing
- PS2-1: Newton’s 3rd Law (Equal & Opposite Forces)
- PS2-2: Sum of Forces
In their role as student physicists, students must analyze why the new magnet-driven space jet launcher is not working as expected. They apply ideas about non touching forces and potential energy.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- PS2-5: Force Fields and Non-Touching Forces
- PS3-2: Potential Energy and Non-Touching Forces
- PS2-3: Strength of Magnetic and Electric Forces
- PS2-4: Gravity Depends on Mass
- PS3-5: Motion and Energy Transfer
In their role as spectroscopists, students learn about light waves and how they interact withmatter, andapply this knowledge to investigate Australia’s elevated skin cancer rate.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- PS4-1: Amplitude and Waves
- PS4-2: Waves Interact with Materials
- PS4-3: Digitized Signals and Waves
- PS4-3: Digital is Best
Working as biomedical scientists, students investigate the causes of surprising variation in spider silk flexibility. Students learn why organisms – even parents. offspring, and siblings – vary in their traits.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- LS3-1: Gene, Protein, Trait. & Mutation
- LS3-2: Sexual Vs.Asexual Reproduction
- LS1-1: Living Things Made of CellsLS4-5 Artificial Selection & Genetic Engineering
- LS1-2: Cell PartsLS1-4: Behaviors & Structures; Reproduction
- LS1-5: Growth
In the role of biologists, students investigate how a population of rough skinned newts in Oregon State Park become incredibly poisonous. They learn about variation, adaptation, and the mechanism of natural selection.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- LS4-4: Genetic Variation in Populations
- LS4-6: Changes in Traits in Populations via Natural Selection
- LS3-1: Gene, Protein, Trait, & MutationsLS1-4: Behaviors & Structures: Reproduction
- LS4-5: Artificial Selection & Genetic Engineering
As clinical engineers, students apply what they have learned about natural selection as well as engineering and design concepts to develop, test and refine treatments for drug-resistant malaria.
19 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- ETS1-1: Criteria and ConstraintsETS1-3: Analyzing Results
- ETS1-2: Evaluating SolutionsETS1-4: Modeling and Iterative Testing
- LS4-4: Genetic Variation in Populations
- LS3-1: Gene, Protein, Trait, & Mutations
In the role of paleontologists, students investigate a fossilrecently excavated in Egypt that could be more closely related to whales or to wolves. They learn how the fossil record helps provide evidence for evolutionary relationships.
10 days
WA State Science Standards (NGSS) Addressed:
- LS4-1: Fossils
- LS4-2: Comparative Anatomy
- LS4-3: Embryonic Development
- ESS1-4: Strata and Earth Age