Contact Forces introduces Grade 8 students pushes and pulls, and the nature of force in its many forms in the natural world. The subtitle of the unit is: Why things sometimes get damaged when they hit each other? The Student Reader is the integrated science literacy component of the unit. In the Student Reader students will confront the complexities of various kinds of collisions, study materials that bend and stretch to deal with the forces they undergo, experience collisions involving fluids, study collision and force in sports, and more. Student Readers focus on aspects of science literacy, including factual articles, history of the sciences, art and literature, spotting bad science in the media and advertisements, graphics comprehension, research-type articles, reliability of sources, and other areas of science literacy.

CKSci Middle School is an enhanced republication of the OpenSciEd Middle School project–with a unique, integrated Core Knowledge science literacy component.

Learn more about the CKSci Middle School Program