Link to the top school in the country's middle school curriculum.

[rafiki]

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[angela&4boys]

http://www.basistucson.org/complete68.htm

 

Oh my stars! Yet another plug for Saxon. MUS is doing the job here, but that's the one program that I lean towards if or when MUS doesn't work.

 

This is what got me thinking more about a spiral education in subjects other than math. So I also dug up this link about science.

 

http://ustimss.msu.edu/coherentscience.pdf

 

But, what do the 25 pages of the science report equate to? I skimmed it, but is there a science curriculum that mimics Saxon?

[rafiki]

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[mcconnellboys]

Wow! Looks like the WTM hasn't led us far wrong, has it? Looking at the information on science makes me want to take another look at Singapore's middle school programming....

 

Thanks for this!

[Nan in Mass]

I, too, am thinking hard. We've been on the right track, I guess, so far. Maybe. We did Singapore's middle school and then did Hewitt's Conceptual Physics and are now taking a crack at Conceptual Chemistry (not moving very fast - too busy, too many interruptions). Now I'm rather wishing we'd done Hewitt's integrated science (can't remember the name) for 7th and 8th. Hopefully, we'll end up doing Natural History (my way of making bio suitable for our family's attitude towards life, covering the things my family needs, and a way of making the bio applied), then CC chem and physics (a three semester sequence). We'll see. I have no idea how much my children remember of what we did. That is what worries me more than what we covered. I think we actually covered things in a fairly organized way, since I have refused to take the typical shattered and splattered approach. I still don't see how I could possibly have managed to get through college chem and physics without understanding some of the really fundamental things that Audubon teaches, like the stuff about elements being made in stars and being recycled over and over on earth and there being two sorts of reproduction, one of which produces an exact copy of the "parent" and the other a new mix of both parents. If I had thought about it, I suppose I might have been able to dope out the answers, but why on earth wasn't it taught in first grade? And why didn't I wonder about it?

-Nan

[razorbackmama]

This is what got me thinking more about a spiral education in subjects other than math. So I also dug up this link about science.

 

http://ustimss.msu.edu/coherentscience.pdf

 

Can you sum up what the article says? I am supposed to be listening to an audio file for a class I'm taking, and then I have to take a test.:tongue_smilie:

[Rebecca in VA]

Please humor me -- I have a killer headache and may not be perceiving things correctly. Is the BASIS science approach pretty much the same as the BJU middle-school sequence, but one year advanced?

 

In BJU Science, you have Science 6, which is a good mix of basic science concepts. It's a foundational course that sets the stage for the next three grades. Science 7 is Life Science, Science 8 is Space and Earth Science, and Science 9 is Physical Science (Physics and Chemistry). These are demanding courses that then set the stage for high-school level work (Biology in 10th, Chemistry in 11th, and Physics in 12th, I think).

 

It sounds as though the sixth-graders at BASIS are doing a similar line-up, though they may be doing Life Science in 6th grade instead of 7th and Space and Earth Science isn't even mentioned in the BASIS schedule. Is this right?

[kiana]

No, they're doing all 3 at the same time -- separate 3 hr/week classes in biology, chemistry and physics rather than one 5 hr/week class in general science.

[rafiki]

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