Sioux City Community Schools -

This webpage provides an overview of what your child will learn by the end of each grade in middle school by the Iowa Core, our statewide academic standards. The Science Iowa Core standards focus on concepts in science and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts, and scientific structures.

When your child arrives at middle school, they are ready to apply the skills they learned in earlier grades to engage in multiple core science ideas. These ideas include the structure of matter and chemical reactions, the structure and function of living things, earth materials and systems, and engineering design. Whether your student uses models, provides arguments with evidence, or obtains and analyzes data about relationships and interactions, they will begin to understand the importance of science in education and life.

Examples of Your Child’s Work at School:

• Analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances.

• Develop a model to describe the cycling of Earth’s materials and the flow of energy that drives this process.

• Analyze and interpret data on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and inform the development of technologies to mitigate their effects.

• Define the criteria and constraints of a design problem to ensure a successful solution.

Read the Iowa Core Parent Guide (English) and Iowa Core Parent Guide (Spanish).

Students engage in science and engineering practices and apply crosscutting concepts to deepen their understanding of science. Core ideas included motion and stability, forces and interactions, energy, earth’s place in the universe, organisms and heredity, ecosystems, and engineering design. In 7th grade, your child may use models, provide evidence to support arguments, or obtain and analyzing data about relationships and interactions among observable components of different systems.

Examples of Your Child’s Work at School:

• Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for the role of photosynthesis in the cycling of matter and flow of energy into and out of organisms.

• Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.

• Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.

• Develop and use a model to describe the role of gravity in the motions within galaxies and the solar system.

• Plan an investigation to determine the relationships among energy transfer, type of matter, mass, and change in the energy of the particles as measured by the temperature.

Read the Iowa Core Parent Guide (English) and Iowa Core Parent Guide (Spanish).

In 8th grade, students use the core concepts they learned in 7th grade to prepare for bigger challenges in high school. While 8th grade students continue to engage in science and engineering practices and apply crosscutting concepts to deepen their understanding of science, their core ideas shift to more advanced scientific concepts. In high school, core ideas include matter and interactions, motion and stability, forces and interactions, energy and waves, ecosystems, biological evolution, unity and diversity, earth’s systems/earth and human activity, and engineering design.

Examples of Your Child’s Work at School:

• Gather and make sense of information to describe that synthetic materials come from natural resources and impact society.

• Evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity in ecosystems.

• Gather and synthesize information about the technologies that have changed the way humans influence the inheritance of desired traits in organisms.

• Develop a model to describe the cycling of water through Earth’s systems driven by energy from the sun and the force of gravity.

• Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in the human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth’s systems.

Read the Iowa Core Parent Guide (English) and Iowa Core Parent Guide (Spanish).

Source: Iowa Core Parent Guides from the Iowa Department of Education.
Read the complete standards on the Iowa Core website.