Science Interactions is a middle grades science program that distributes physical, Earth, and life science topics over three courses.

The program has been evaluated in terms of how well its content matches each of three topic-specific sets of key science ideas, and how well it provides effective instructional material in terms of a set of universal criteria for the teaching of science ideas. This report on Science Interactions assesses the program’s Earth science component.

The Earth science idea set focuses on the processes that change the surface of the Earth. In Science Interactions, this set of key Earth science ideas is addressed in seven chapters over the three courses. Course 1 introduces landforms in chapter 1. Chapters 14 and 15 introduce several processes that shape the Earth, including rivers, gravity, glaciers, and wind. Chapter 18 introduces earthquakes and volcanoes. In course 2, earthquakes and volcanoes are reintroduced in chapter 2. Chapter 12 mentions the changes that take place on the ocean floor and shorelines. In course 3, chapter 15 presents ideas about plate tectonics.

The other two sections of this report—the Content Analysis and the Instructional Analysis—summarize the results of the evaluation of the Earth science content and instructional efficacy of Science Interactions.

In both sections, within-the-text page references to the evaluated materials have been clarified by the use of letter suffixes: “s” denotes the student text (as in “p. 33s”), and “t” denotes the Teacher Wraparound Edition (as in “p. 33t”). Where “T” appears as part of a page number (as in “p. 31T”), it denotes the Teacher’s Guide within the Teacher Wraparound Edition. And the use of “A” or “B” (as in “p. 33A” and “p. 33B”) simply refers to a multiple-part page that is so identified in the materials.

The reference works cited in this report are given as complete citations in the References list, along with those cited in other reports in this document. The References list can be accessed by clicking on the link at the beginning of each content and instructional analysis. To view a specific research reference while reading the content and instructional analyses, simply click on the in-text citation.

The key science ideas and the instructional analysis categories are presented and discussed under Project 2061 Analysis Procedure on the main menu.