8th grade science was somewhat of a joke. It was Earth Science, and honestly I can’t remember much about it. Our teacher was a typical coach. Passive learning. Read this section of material in your book and do the review questions at the end of the chapter. That was a typical work assignment. That and to deal with all the other rowdy kids in the class. Never did our teacher really get up and actually teach us something. Stand up in front of the class and write on the board? Nope. Instead it was sorta a learn at home type thing. Years later we could have learned by the web in similar fashion.
One 6 weeks we were studying the planets and it was somewhat interesting. Our teacher took the trouble of redoing the room completely with space type junk. Dark curtains and planets hanging from the ceiling. It was cool at the time. Plus we got to giggle whenever someone mentioned Uranus in typical 8th grade fashion.