Help me get my kid up to level on science, please!!

[Shelly in IL]

I have an 8th grader - probably going to school next year. We have been happily using a reputed science program that is kid taught/labs etc. I have started quizzing him and realizing there is barely retention going on. I am worried because I need him to be to grade level (at least!)

I am been using this program for the second year (2nd level) and am worried that I have just wasted 7th and the beginning of 8th grade years of science.

What would be a good program to make sure he is up to snuff, quickly? BTW, he is a very bright kid - making great grades in other classes - this is why I wasn't worried about the science. Something about the program is not working for him. HELP!!!
______________

[Pippen]

If you have to make a change anyway and think he's going to school next year, you might want to take a look at the textbook that your public school is using for 8th grade so at least he'd be consistent with his class. You can check with the district to find out which units they're doing out of the text.

As for 7th grade, it might not be so critical to catch him up, depending on what's being taught. For instance in our district 7th grade is life science and the content is repeated again in 9th grade biology.

[Shelly in IL]

I'm sure that there will be a variety science programs coming into the school. Thanks.

[Pippen]

I'm sure that there will be a variety science programs coming into the school. Thanks.

Is it a private school? If it's a public school, the schools feeding into it typically would be using the same program. More and more districts are coordinating curriculum due to No Child Left Behind requirements.

[Julie in MN]

Are you using the Rainbow quizzes? Those help keep my son on-task and prepared for retention of smaller details than I usually emphasize.

http://www.beginningspublishing.com/RainbowQuizzes.pdf
answers: http://www.beginningspublishing.com/RainbowAnswers.pdf

[CO MOM]

It appears you are currently using Rainbow? We used this last year and had a similar problem. Because the chapters are short and to the point and the student is not having to spend a lot of time on science each week, there is a tendency I think for the student to rush through and not really retain. I think the content is fine as far the concepts taught however, so maybe rather than using a different book, you could just go back through what you have and review in more detail. We ended up having my ds take notes on each reading section and do oral discussions each week as part of lab time to make sure he was really getting it. We also used the quizzes the OP mentioned. This helped considerably with retention. The curriculum is different in that almost everything is important, including all the labs and illustrations, and should be learned, so we found having our ds spend more time with the material helped quite a bit.

I guess I would look at what you are wanting him to understand more fully - is it different material than was presented or is it that he is not remembering what he learned? If the latter, then it would be a fairly easy curriculum to "double up" on and review while still proceeding with the new without needing a different book. HTH

[Julie in MN]

It appears you are currently using Rainbow? We used this last year and had a similar problem. Because the chapters are short and to the point and the student is not having to spend a lot of time on science each week, there is a tendency I think for the student to rush through and not really retain. I think the content is fine as far the concepts taught however, so maybe rather than using a different book, you could just go back through what you have and review in more detail. We ended up having my ds take notes on each reading section and do oral discussions each week as part of lab time to make sure he was really getting it. We also used the quizzes the OP mentioned. This helped considerably with retention. The curriculum is different in that almost everything is important, including all the labs and illustrations, and should be learned, so we found having our ds spend more time with the material helped quite a bit.

I guess I would look at what you are wanting him to understand more fully - is it different material than was presented or is it that he is not remembering what he learned? If the latter, then it would be a fairly easy curriculum to "double up" on and review while still proceeding with the new without needing a different book. HTH

:iagree:

And that reminds me... the teacher guide is so helpful to me. It's short & to the point, but it tells me what the main ideas are, and it explains more about the answers than just "yes" or "no."

The teacher guide helps me have a quick but fruitful conversation with my son.
Julie

[Shelly in IL]

I"ll post more later.

[Shelly in IL]

I really didn't mean to mention its name - sorry about that, I forgot it was there at the bottom. We do science 3 days a week - he takes notes on the section and he does very nicely on the questions at the end. Labs go well. But, he just took the quiz, and he got an F. Didn't retain it at all. I do use the teacher's guide. So any other suggestions? I do try to discuss it each day. He didn't study for the quiz, other than briefly looking at his notes, but I thought he would do better than an F!! Has me a bit concerned!

[Julie in MN]

I really didn't mean to mention its name - sorry about that, I forgot it was there at the bottom. We do science 3 days a week - he takes notes on the section and he does very nicely on the questions at the end. Labs go well. But, he just took the quiz, and he got an F. Didn't retain it at all. I do use the teacher's guide. So any other suggestions? I do try to discuss it each day. He didn't study for the quiz, other than briefly looking at his notes, but I thought he would do better than an F!! Has me a bit concerned!

Shelly, does he have experience doing other tests, and doing better?

My son hasn't done a lot of testing so he has really needed a lot of training in how to review, study, and take a test. He's in Rainbow year 2 now, and there's even more vocab & information to remember. However, I'm glad we're spending this time in 7th & 8th, before it really counts in high school.

So is your son like mine, and just getting used to testing? Or has he used curriculum with tests in the past?
Julie

[nancy in nj]

My daughter used Rainbow in 6th & 7th and we supplemented with CyberEd's physical science, earth science and life science. It's a 1 year online subscription that we bought at a good price through the homeschool buyer's coop. Since then the Cyber Ed business was merged into the parent company but the buyer's coop was still able gain access for homeschoolers. This would be an enjoyable way to review the physical science yr. 1 material and supplement year 2 to improve retention.

Even though we stressed scientific reasoning and understanding the concepts rather than retention of facts (as well as strong math skills), we found my daughter had no problem with Prentice Hall Physical Science (which is very rigorous) when we transitioned to a normal textbook in 8th grade.

I would suggest that if your son is going to do biology rather than physical science in 9th grade, it would be helpful to beef up the chemistry portion of Rainbow because a fair amount of chemistry is required for biology these days (we are doing high school chemistry before biology so I can't advise you on which specific topics to focus on), but in general there is no way that Rainbow matches the rigor of the chemistry found in the most rigorous public school physical science texts (one example is the whole concept of moles which is not covered in Rainbow). I would suggest The Teaching Company lectures (which have a great sale right now) to ensure that he's covered the basics of chemistry thoroughly, specifically in those areas that overlap w/ biology. These lectures are great and even though it is "high school chem," it certainly helped us get through the mole section of physical science last year.

Having said that, we were well served by Rainbow, and, in fact, we are using Spectrum + The Teaching Company lectures this year to prepare for AP chem next year.

Hopefully others can chime in with more specifics if you let everyone know what science the school uses in 9th.

Nancy

[mom31257]

:bigear: I'm listening in because we're doing Rainbow right now for 7th. I'm curious how she is going to do at retaining information long term.

[Musicmom]

I really didn't mean to mention its name - sorry about that, I forgot it was there at the bottom. We do science 3 days a week - he takes notes on the section and he does very nicely on the questions at the end. Labs go well. But, he just took the quiz, and he got an F. Didn't retain it at all. I do use the teacher's guide. So any other suggestions? I do try to discuss it each day. He didn't study for the quiz, other than briefly looking at his notes, but I thought he would do better than an F!! Has me a bit concerned!

Hi Shelley,

We used Rainbow in 6th and 7th grade. I never tested, but it is true that retention is low. I don't think it's your son--I think it has more to do with how the program is set up. Three days a week is not very much time on science and the extremely compact chapters make retention difficult--as a previous poster said, every word is important! I would have a tough time retaining it! But I was not worried about retention at that stage; didn't expect it, didn't grade, just kept an eye on it. I do think the Rainbow program provides good pre-high school exposure to science, so I would say your 7th grade time last year was definitely not wasted! If you were going to homeschool next year, I'd say don't worry, the exposure has him at grade level, and he'll be ready to start in on high school science, and will learn to retain more then. However, since you're planning on private school for him next year, I think you may want to consider switching to a program this year that will better prepare him to retain material, and to study for and take tests.

You might want to look into Apologia Physical Science (this suggestion is assuming that 9th grade science at the private school is biology--which would be typical--but I'd recommend checking.) I once heard at a homeschool conference that Physical Science is intended to get students ready for high school science, so it should put him at grade level. I haven't used the Physical Science book itself, as we started right off with Apologia Biology in 8th, but the format of the book is probably very similar. The chapters in the Apologia books are much wordier, in a good sense, presenting material in a very understandable way and providing much more contact/soak time with the material. At the end of each chapter (called a module) is a study guide that helps the student review the material (in effect teaching the student how and what to study) in preparation for the module test. Both my kids learned a lot about studying doing Apologia biology.

HTH!

[Shelly in IL]

Good suggestion! I think I'll look for it used - anybody have it? Thanks.

[Shelly in IL]

You know, he really isn't used to testing much. He has been taking a SAT vocab. class at co-op, and he has figured out that he needs to make flash cards. He is carrying a very strong (maybe the best) grade in that class.

Any good study skills info? To be honest, I wasn't a very good studier through high school and college and I could use a refresher!

Thanks for all of your posts.

[LoriM]

I teach middle school science (as well as middle school math) at our local classical Christian school. I think it depends on what you think is "up to speed" in science, particularly for a classical student. I use Event-Based Science for my 7th grade (and PH Science Explorer Life Science for 6th grade).

Classical science should work the same way that classical literature or classical history works. In the grammar stage, your student should be learning vocabulary and basic ideas of science in all fields of science. Memorizing the planets, phases of the moon, seasons of the year, life cycle of fish, frogs, butterflies, etc are all perfect topics for science in the grammar stage. By the Logic stage, including all of middle school, you are talking about relationships and connections. For example, my 7th graders this year have studied hurricanes, contagious diseases, and thrill rides. But it's not about the *breadth* of science knowledge, but instead the habits of mind and nature of science that I want to develop. So, with hurricanes, the teams of students wrote a three-page hurricane newspaper, exploring the impact on the community in all areas, designing an evacuation plan, emergency water supply chain, etc. But for the contagious disease unit, they played a game of "who started it?" and tried to unravel the patient zero and path connecting the sick members of their community. And then they came up with recommendations to stop the spread of the disease, learned how to treat it, etc. Now in the thrill ride unit, they'll explore several properties of physical science, and design their own model theme park ride with a partner, but verify it won't kill passengers (LOL) and show the ways it demonstrates Newton's laws of motion.

Obviously, this is not "all" of life science, chemistry, or physical science. I don't even TRY to "fill in the gaps" of every aspect of science they don't know. I want them to think like a scientist, not instantly recall the formula for work. (There's plenty of time for that as they use the concepts over and over.)

Then, on top of the classroom activities, each student must do an individual long-term project for the science fair. That gives them the opportunity to explore a topic of interest at a deeper/wider level.

When I homeschooled my two daughters through science in middle school and then high school, we approached each week with a topic that matched our chronological readings for literature and history. They read two or three real books on a topic, researched and wrote a paper related to the subject, and did a lab exploration for those topics that could be made more concrete with an experiment. I chose the topics using the table of contents for some spine textbook in the field we were studying. So, when we were studying life science, even in 7th grade, I used a college biology textbook to tell me what order to study things, but they didn't necessarily read the passages from the biology textbook (unless they needed more references). Instead they read library books that were age-appropriate, and had lots of pictures. :)

Anyway, I don't think we ever spent more than 3 hours a week on science until high school. It was more than enough...and my girls are still science-learners, who read and study ideas in science for fun. I worry about my current students, because our classroom approach (and necessary "overkill") is sucking the fun out of studying science for some of them, and I don't know how to fix that. On the other hand, I do work diligently to make science hands-on, investigative, and exploratory, so at least it's one class they don't sit in a chair with a textbook.

And yet, some of them don't remember what we did yesterday. LOL. So don't blame it all on the curriculum, or on your teaching. He might be a middle schooler. :)

[Shelly in IL]

Yes, maybe that is part of it. I just remembered that I have some PH Science explorer stuff - maybe I"ll bring that out to supplement. Thanks.

[Brenda in MA]

and we all loved the program. To improve their retention, I did have them make flash cards of the bolded vocabulary from the sections they had read. They reviewed these flash cards 4 days/wk, and they did fine on the quizzes and end of section reviews with little to no extra studying.

They have both moved on to high school science (and one to college), and they are doing fine in more rigorous since courses. I think that learning the vocabulary of science is very important at the middle school level.

HTH,
Brenda