Science

The Science curriculum at Judkins is currently aligned with the California Science Standards for 7th and 8th grade, and is transitioning to align with the national Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Students actively engage on a daily basis to tackle the academic knowledge and skills needed to be a critical thinker and problem solver in science. Science is an activity-based curriculum with a wide variety of labs, inquiry challenges, creative thinking tasks, and communication of learned material both orally and in written form.

Students should expect to work collaboratively and cooperatively on a daily basis. The skills of engineering and science rely on students’ ability to critique and build off of the ideas of others. A student should also expect to complete assignments in a timely manner whether they are short term or long term tasks since others are relying on their preparation. While homework quantity varies among teachers, it is often a long range project or several smaller assignments per week.   

The department focuses on showing students how science is connected to their daily lives and has a strong emphasis in vocabulary acquisition. Learning to speak like a scientist and properly identify concepts is one key to scientific success. The other area of focus is helping students to see the connections between concepts. Science is limiting when topics are addressed in isolation, and inspiring when seen as a connected art. Students will also be given time to further develop their research skills and learn to ask meaningful questions to help them explore the world around them.