Shamong Township School District

Shamong Township Schools K-8 science curriculum is designed for students to have direct hands on opportunities in science. Teachers guide and instruct students through a series of three modules in each grade.  An inquiry based approach is used as students participate in scientific investigations and are taught to support their theories with scientific evidence.

Kindergarten:

Push, Pull Go-  Students explore motion and the forces that make things move.

Living Things and Their Needs: Provides students the opportunity to investigate and observe what plants and animals need to survive

Weather and Sky:  Extends young students' natural curiosity about the weather and sky by focusing on direct observations and introducing the main weather features.

First Grade:

Light and Sound Waves:  Introduces students to the physical science concepts of light and sound, and that both phenomena travel in waves.

Exploring Organisms:  Introduces students to the importance of structure and function in plants and animals and the ties that exist between parents and their offspring.

Sky Watchers:  Provides opportunities to understand the Seasons, the movement of the moon, and where earth is located in the solar system.

Second Grade:

Matter:  Introduces students to the three states of matter, characteristics of each state, some properties of matter, and physical and chemical changes in matter.

Ecosystem Diversity:  Takes students on an exploration of what living things need to survive in their particular environments.

Earth Materials- Students explore water, rocks, sand, soil, landforms, and bodies of water.

Third Grade:

Forces and Interactions: Helps students understand the physical science concepts at work in forces and interactions.

Life in Ecosystems:  Introduces students to the diversity of living organisms, a significant component of a healthy ecosystem.

Weather and Climate Patterns:  Introduces students to all of the components that make up weather.

Fourth Grade:

Energy Works:  Allows students to gain experience with different kinds of energy and see how energy is converted to different forms within a system.

Plant and Animal Structures:  Introduces students to a variety of internal and external structures of plants and animals.

Changing Earth:  Introduces students to the earth science concept of how the distinct features of Earth came to be.

Fifth Grade:

Structure and Properties of Matter:  Allows students to discover both physical and chemical properties of matter, differentiating the properties of solids, liquids, and gases.

Matter and Energy in Ecosystems:   Allows students to explore concepts related to ecosystems.

Earth and Space Systems:  Students explore how Earth is both part of a larger system and is itself composed of interconnected systems.

*Kindergarten – Grade 5 use the Carolina Building Blocks of Science Program. 

Sixth Grade:

Ecosystems and Their Interactions: Students build models and work with simulations to learn how the food web, predation, genetics, and the energy pyramid effect ecosystems.

Electricity, Waves, and Information Transfer:  Students analyze circuits and waves, identify relationships between energy, information, and how information is stored. Students apply this to the real world and analyze how waves are used with GPS, the brain, and medical technologies.

Weather and Climate Systems: Students study storms, winds, hurricanes, and tornadoes then model the water cycle and the collision of air masses to visualize these effects.  Students use data sets to predict the weather and make evidence-based claims.

Seventh Grade:

Matter and Its Interactions: Students record what they already know about matter and how it changes. From keeping drinks cool, warming up hands in the cold, curing headaches and making salad dressing- they use this knowledge to engineer their own invention.

Space Systems Exploration:  Pulling together everything they have learned about the Sun-Earth-Moon system, students use data to construct information about lunar cycles, tides, eclipses, tilt, and gravity as they develop models that help explain the universe.

Structure and Function: Starting at the cellular level for plants and animals, students learn about cells, how those cells work in systems to contribute to survival. Students investigate how photosynthesis and cellular respiration drive the flow of energy and matter in an organism.

*Grade 6 – Grade 8 use Smithsonian STCMS™ Program