Maine's Learning Results:
Updated
A. Unifying Themes
1. Systems
2. Models
3. Constancy and Change
4. Scale
B. The Skills and Traits of Scientific
Inquiry and Technological Design
1. Skills and Traits of Scientific Inquiry
2. Skills and Traits of Technological Design
C. The Scientific and Technological
Enterprise
1. Understandings of Inquiry
2. Understandings about Science and Technology
3. Science, Technology, and Society
4. History and Nature of Science
D. The Physical Setting
1. Universe and Solar System
2. Earth
3. Matter and Energy
4. Force and Motion
E. The Living Environment
1. Biodiversity
2. Ecosystems
3. Cells
4. Heredity and Reproduction
5. Evolution
These are the specific learning
objectives that we cover in Grade 8 Science
D1 Universe and Solar System
Students explain the movements and describe the location
composition,
and characteristics of our solar system and universe, including
planets, the sun, and galaxies.
a. Describe the different
kinds of
objects in the solar system
including planets, sun, moons,
asteroids, and comets.
b. Explain the motions that
cause
days, years, phases of the
moon,
and eclipses.
c. Describe the location of
our solar
system in its galaxy and
explain
that other galaxies exist and
that
they include stars and
planets.
D2 Earth
Students describe the various cycles, physical and biological forces
and processes, position in space, energy transformations, and
human actions that affect the short-term and long-term changes to the
Earth.
a. Explain how the tilt of
Earth’s
rotational axis relative to
the plane
of its yearly orbit around
the sun
affects the day length and
sunlight
intensity to cause seasons.
b. Describe Earth Systems -
biosphere, atmosphere,
hydrosphere and lithosphere -
and
cycles and interactions within
them (including water moving
among and between them, rocks
forming and transforming, and
weather formation).
c. Give several reasons why
the
climate is different in
different
regions of the Earth.
d. Describe significant Earth
resources and how their
limited
supply affects how they are
used.
e. Describe the effect of
gravity on
objects on Earth.
f. Give examples of abrupt
changes
and slow changes in Earth
Systems.
k. Describe the properties of
solar
radiation and its interaction
with
objects on Earth.