Grade 8 Science Mississippi standards Standards

Earth and Space Science

Physical Science

Life Science

Earth's Resources

Students will demonstrate an understanding that a decrease in natural resources is directly related to the increase in human population on Earth and must be conserved.

Read and evaluate scientific information about advancements in renewable and nonrenewable resources. Propose and defend ways to decrease national and global dependency on nonrenewable resources.

Create and defend a proposal for reducing the environmental effects humans have on Earth (e.g., population increases, consumer demands, chemical pollution, deforestation, and change in average annual temperature).

Using scientific data, debate the societal advantages and disadvantages of technological advancements in renewable energy sources.

Using an engineering design process, develop a system to capture and distribute thermal energy that makes renewable energy more readily available and reduces human impact on the environment (e.g., building solar water heaters, conserving home energy).

Earth's Structure and History

Students will demonstrate an understanding of geological evidence to analyze patterns in Earth's major events, processes, and evolution in history.

Use scientific evidence to create a timeline of Earth's history that depicts relative dates from index fossil records and layers of rock (strata).

Create a model of the processes involved in the rock cycle and relate it to the fossil record.

Construct and analyze scientific arguments to support claims that most fossil evidence is an indication of the diversity of life that was present on Earth and that relationships exist between past and current life forms.

Use research and evidence to document how evolution has been shaped both gradually and through mass extinction by Earth's varying geological conditions (e.g., climate change, meteor impacts, and volcanic eruptions).

Earth's Systems and Cycles

Students will demonstrate an understanding that physical processes and major geological events (e.g., plate movement, volcanic activity, mountain building, weathering, erosion) are powered by the Sun and the Earth's internal heat and have occurred over millions of years.

Investigate and explain how the flow of Earth's internal energy drives the cycling of matter through convection currents between Earth's surface and the deep interior causing plate movements.

Explore and debate theories of plate tectonics to form conclusions about past and current movements of rocks at Earth's surface throughout history.

Map land and water patterns from various time periods and use rocks and fossils to report evidence of how Earth's plates have moved great distances, collided, and spread apart.

Research and assess the credibility of scientific ideas to debate and discuss how Earth's constructive and destructive processes have changed Earth's surface at varying time and spatial scales.

Use models that demonstrate convergent and divergent plate movements that are responsible for most landforms and the distribution of most rocks and minerals within Earth's crust.

Design and conduct investigations to evaluate the chemical and physical processes involved in the formation of soils.

Explain the interconnected relationship between surface water and groundwater.

Students will demonstrate an understanding of natural hazards (volcanic eruptions, severe weather, earthquakes) and construct explanations for why some hazards are predictable and others are not.

Research and map various types of natural hazards to determine their impact on society.

Compare and contrast technologies that predict natural hazards to identify which types of technologies are most effective.

Using an engineering design process, create mechanisms to improve community resilience, which safeguard against natural hazards (e.g., building restrictions in flood or tidal zones, regional watershed management, Firewise construction).

Reproduction and Heredity

Students will demonstrate an understanding of how sexual reproduction results in offspring with genetic variation while asexual reproduction results in offspring with identical genetic information.

Obtain and communicate information about the relationship of genes, chromosomes, and DNA, and construct explanations comparing their relationship to inherited characteristics.

Create a diagram of mitosis and explain its role in asexual reproduction, which results in offspring with identical genetic information.

Construct explanations of how genetic information is transferred during meiosis.

Engage in discussion using models and evidence to explain that sexual reproduction produces offspring that have a new combination of genetic information different from either parent.

Compare and contrast advantages and disadvantages of asexual and sexual reproduction.

Students will demonstrate an understanding of the differences in inherited and acquired characteristics and how environmental factors (natural selection) and the use of technologies (selective breeding, genetic engineering) influence the transfer of genetic information.

Construct an argument based on evidence for how environmental and genetic factors influence the growth of organisms.

Use various scientific resources to research and support the historical findings of Gregor Mendel to explain the basic principles of heredity.

Use mathematical and computational thinking to analyze data and make predictions about the outcome of specific genetic crosses (monohybrid Punnett Squares) involving simple dominant/recessive traits.

Debate the ethics of artificial selection (selective breeding, genetic engineering) and the societal impacts of humans changing the inheritance of desired traits in organisms.

Students will demonstrate an understanding that chromosomes contain many distinct genes and that each gene holds the instructions for the production of a specific protein, which in turn affects the traits of an individual.

Communicate through diagrams that chromosomes contain many distinct genes and that each gene holds the instructions for the production of specific proteins, which in turn affects the traits of the individual (not to include transcription or translation).

Construct scientific arguments from evidence to support claims about the potentially harmful, beneficial, or neutral effects of genetic mutations on organisms.

Adaptation and Diversity

Students will demonstrate an understanding of the process of natural selection, in which variations in a population increase some individuals' likelihood of surviving and reproducing in a changing environment.

Use various scientific resources to analyze the historical findings of Charles Darwin to explain basic principles of natural selection.

Investigate to construct explanations about natural selection that connect growth, survival, and reproduction to genetic factors, environmental factors, food intake, and interactions with other organisms.

Students will demonstrate an understanding of how similarities and differences among living and extinct species provide evidence that changes have occurred in organisms over time and that similarity of characteristics provides evidence of common ancestry.

Analyze and interpret data (e.g. pictures, graphs) to explain how natural selection may lead to increases and decreases of specific traits in populations over time.

Construct written and verbal explanations to describe how genetic variations of traits in a population increase some organisms' probability of surviving and reproducing in a specific environment.

Obtain and evaluate scientific information to explain that separated populations, that remain separated, can evolve through mutations to become a new species (speciation).

Analyze displays of pictorial data to compare and contrast embryological and homologous/analogous structures across multiple species to identify evolutionary relationships.

Motions, Forces, and Energy

Students will demonstrate an understanding of the properties, behaviors, and application of waves.

Collect, organize, and interpret data about the characteristics of sound and light waves to construct explanations about the relationship between matter and energy.

Investigate research-based mechanisms for capturing and converting wave energy (frequency, amplitude, wavelength, and speed) into electrical energy.

Conduct simple investigations about the performance of waves to describe their behavior (e.g., refraction, reflection, transmission, and absorption) as they interact with various materials (e.g., lenses, mirrors, and prisms).

Use scientific processes to plan and conduct controlled investigations to conclude sound is a wave phenomenon that is characterized by amplitude and frequency.

Conduct scientific investigations that describe the behavior of sound when resonance changes (e.g., waves in a stretched string and design of musical instruments).

Obtain and evaluate scientific information to explain the relationship between seeing color and the transmission, absorption, or reflection of light waves by various materials.

Research the historical significance of wave technology to explain how digitized tools have evolved to encode and transmit information (e.g., telegraph, cell phones, and wireless computer networks).

Compare and contrast the behavior of sound and light waves to determine which types of waves need a medium for transmission.