This intensive three-year program challenges students in a full lab with an inquiry and project based curriculum that allows for real world application of student learning.
Sixth graders study geological and environmental science, seventh graders study life science with biology and anatomy and physiology while eighth graders study physics and chemistry.
In each class, students will have one to three labs or activities each week applying the knowledge they have gained in a real-life experiment/analysis or design-type lesson, improving their upper level thinking and problem solving skills.
Their religious and spiritual lessons are incorporated as they are required to link a Biblical principle to every activity. Throughout the year students have a variety of outlets for creatively engaging the material such as building, labeling and presenting models of cells, atoms and tectonic plates.
During eighth grade, students launch water rockets and build vehicles powered by equal but opposite reactions to better understand Newtonian laws of physics. They also build structures to protect a raw egg falling from the roof of a building; and take a field trip to an indoor skydiving simulator to learn about gravity, friction and air resistance.
During seventh grade, several different dissections take place in allowing students to explore God’s engineering through anatomy lessons. During sixth grade, students build and observe how different types of volcanoes erupt and design structures to test for racking strength under various earthquake conditions.
Every student on campus gets introduced to lab-based science several times each year during “buddy-lab” days. On these days each middle school student mentors a younger student through a lab experiment and teaches them about the scientific principles underpinning the activity.
One of the highlights in this curriculum is the yearly Science Fair. This project is worked on over five months. The curriculum breaks the project into small sections so the students can work on one section at a time. When complete, they have a 15-20 page research paper and a 2-5 minute oral presentation.
Last year, a sixth grader got promoted all the way to the National Science Fair competition. This year, at the SCA fair in January, 65 scientists and engineers from the local area came to judge the student projects. Several judges expressed amazement at the student dedication and level of performance as well as their creativity and enthusiasm for science.
The judge scores of written work combined with the scores from the student oral presentations to determine the top students to be promoted to compete at the RIMS (Riverside Inyo Mono & San Bernardino Counties) competition in April. These students then compete against approximately 1,000 winners from all school districts within those counties ranging from sixth through twelfth grade.
This year St. Catherine of Alexandria earned one bronze, three silver and two gold medals. The two gold medalists were then promoted by RIMS to compete at the state level in May. Seventh grader Nathan Mermilliod won third place at the State Competition with his project that analyzed the effect of density differences between a salinity pool and a chlorinated pool on timed swimming events.
Eighth grader Ashton Authement took first place at the State Competition with his project that compared leachate contamination in foods from the metals in different types of cookware. Both of these young men have been promoted yet again to compete with other top young scientists throughout the nation at the National BROADCOM MASTERS competition next fall.
While we celebrate these very visible successes, it is also important to see how much growth every student shows after their three years in this program. Students show increased interest in the areas of science and mathematics and graduates continually credit the skills learned during this program for helping them obtain higher degrees of success during further education.