The OpenSciEd Approach
OpenSciEd aims to create a set of exemplary science instructional materials that are:
1.
Designed and aligned to the Framework and NGSS.
2.
Based on research regarding how students learn, what motivates learning, and the implications for teaching;
The OpenSciEd approach highlights two key instructional shifts in the Next Generation Science Standards: phenomena-based teaching and the importance of coherence.
3.
Developed with educators and extensively field-tested by teachers and schools.
Inside an OSE Classroom
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Students are making sense of a phenomenon or problem, connecting each lesson across time and providing meaning during a lesson
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Units are based on a science storyline (Reiser, Novak & McGill, 2017), a coherent sequence of lessons where each step is driven by students’ questions that arise from their interactions with phenomena.
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Students work through the classroom’s questions through science and engineering practices to figure out the unit’s phenomena or solve identified problems.
Read “OpenSciEd: Two Teachers’ Experiences in Middle School Science”
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Instructional Model
The OpenSciEd Instructional Model uses a storyline approach– a logical sequence of lessons that are motivated by students’ questions that arise from students’ interactions with phenomena.
To help teachers and students advance through a unit storyline, the instructional model takes advantage of five routines. The routines typically follow a pattern as students kick off a unit of study, investigate different questions they have, put the pieces together from those investigations, and then problematize the next set of questions to investigate.
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The Five Routines
To help teachers and students advance through a unit storyline, the instructional model takes advantage of five routines. The routines typically follow a pattern as students kick off a unit of study, investigate different questions they have, put the pieces together from those investigations, and then problematize the next set of questions to investigate.
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The Driving Question Board
The Driving Question Board is an essential tool used throughout the OpenSciEd units as a way to generate, keep track of, and revisit student questions that drive the investigation of the anchoring phenomenon and related phenomena.
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Scope and Sequence
This Scope and Sequence articulates how OpenSciEd’s middle school program is organized into bundles of performance expectations (PEs) used to design a target outcome, how the ideas in each unit build on prior learning, and how the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are reflected in the PE bundles.
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