Are you ready to crush this school year? Is creating lesson plans just too much on top of teaching on top of grading on top of classroom management on top of *ahem* living your life? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’ve come to the right place. I’m about to simplify your life with a full year middle school earth science science curriculum bundle! This life-saving collection of resources is ready to use for in person, hybrid, or virtual teaching and, best of all, requires NO PREP!
Through the units included in this middle school earth science curriculum, you and your students will dive deeply into the earth and beyond by investigating key geology and weather concepts and develop a sense of wonder for the natural world while critically thinking about the interactions of humans and our planet.
If you have questions at any point moving forward, please email me at laneyleeteaches@gmail.com. I am here to support you 365 days a year!
If you’re familiar with NGSS, you may know that the earth science standards are not necessarily grouped in a specific grade level, but are spaced out over middle school as a whole. For that reason, this curriculum is not specifically recommended for one grade level and could be carried out at any point in middle school (or even early high school). If your school uses an integrated science approach, you could even take the units included in this curriculum and split them across several grade levels. It depends on your school and what kinds of prior knowledge your students are coming to you with.
Additionally, some of the topics covered are typically reserved for high school science courses, but I have been successfully teaching them to 7th graders for the past decade. I wouldn’t include them if the students didn’t find them so fun and interesting.
Hopefully you will find that all the NGSS earth science topics are covered adequately as are the related disciplinary core ideas. Many of the links included should give your students the sense of phenomena that is essential to the successful implementation of NGSS.
This unit is all about Earth’s history and the rock cycle. Begin by exploring the history of earth through all its eras and epochs, and then move your way through plate tectonics and the rock cycle. Your students will learn about convection currents and the way that plates interact to create changes on Earth’s surface.
Next, outer space! This unit will surely be a crowd favorite as it covers all the topics students are really interested in, including dark matter and black holes!
First, though, you’ll cover the differences in meteors, comets, and asteroids. Students will explore all the different ways that the Earth, Moon, and Sun interact, including moon phases, seasons, and tides.
Finally, take a look at stars and their characteristics and life cycles, the galaxy, and evidence for the Big Bang Theory.
This unit is a fan favorite! It’s got everything you need to thoroughly cover weather and climates. First you’ll begin by discussing layers of the atmosphere and clouds. After that, move into wind, air masses, and fronts and the ways they interact. Students will apply their knowledge to predict the weather. Finally, discuss ocean currents and the ways that all of these factors contribute to regional climates.
This unit combines what students learn in both the geology and weather unit to discuss all the different kinds of extreme conditions that can occur on Earth. This unit is broken into Earth’s interior related disasters and weather related disasters. It covers: hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, blizzards, and droughts.
Finally, no Earth science curriculum would be complete without a discussion on how humans are impacting the Earth that we rely on for the resources we need to live. In this unit, you will spend a week discussing each of the following topics: fossil fuels and climate change, renewable energy, other resources, pollution, and human population growth. There’s so much to discuss here related to how our per capita consumption of resources can be best managed for a sustainably growing population.
I was hoping you’d say that! Click the links below to download everything you need for a successful year:
This middle school earth science curriculum leaves about 2 weeks (give or take) that you can fill in any way you like. If you do all of the included activities and projects, you may not end up having two weeks to spare, but I think it’s important to not mandate every second of every class period, and to leave some space to follow the rabbit holes that your students find the most interesting.
That beings said, if you’re stuck for ideas, some suggestions I’d make are that you could:
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I work hard so you don’t have to. Finding useful resources for your lesson is a lot of work. Making them is even more work. Whenever I can, I always trade money for time. A couple dollars to reimburse another classroom teacher for their efforts in creating valuable resources is seen as a fair trade according to thousands of positive reviews.
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