Imagine observing a 3rd-grade classroom where students are working together to plan and carry out investigations to explain why two magnets stick together or push away from one another. If the investigations are derived from a phenomenon-driven curriculum, you’d likely also see groups of students enthusiastically moving around the room, placing magnets on different surfaces and objects to see what happens, exuding excitement with each result and using an array of literacy skills to make sense of and explain what they’re observing. 

This was exactly what I encountered in Rhondi Kennedy’s third-grade classroom at Central Intermediate School near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as part of my first visit with the Knowledge Matters School Tour and my first chance to see an elementary school implementing phenomenon-driven curriculum across all elementary grades.

Phenomena are observable events that occur in the universe that we use science knowledge to explain or predict. Students experience phenomena in their everyday lives when they see puddles disappear overnight or feel a wall vibrate when music is played loudly. 

Phenomena are also the context for the work of both scientists and engineers and can be used to drive learning experiences for students unlocking their natural curiosities, motivating them to want to make sense of why a phenomena occurs or how it works.

Phenomenon-driven instruction represents a shift in science education that began with The National Research Council and National Academy of Sciences’ 2012 release of Framework for K-12 Science Education which recommended science education be built around three major dimensions: science and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts, and core science ideas. Engaging students in making sense of phenomena supports the nexus of the three dimensions. It is how students construct meaning of science ideas and engage in scientific practices and ways of thinking. 

When we sat down with elementary teachers at Central Intermediate and asked them to share what surprised them the most since implementing a curriculum centered on phenomena, they talked about the confidence students exhibited when sharing science ideas and ways of thinking about science through talk and writing. One teacher noted that “the kids are just getting better at learning how to communicate with each other” and that “they’re getting the confidence to discuss and turn and talk”. 

We witnessed this confidence firsthand during our visit to various classrooms at Central Intermediate and could see how the curriculum provided ample opportunity for students to talk and share what they were thinking with their peers. One teacher noted that the students “are having to do so much more reasoning” and thinking about “Do I agree with this person? Why do I disagree?” Students like learning how the world works and enjoy talking about phenomena. 

Often, the phenomena students investigate in the classroom represent phenomena they have encountered outside the classroom, giving students a wealth of background experiences to bring to their discussions. Many of the students in Mrs. Kennedy’s classroom talked about experiences they had with magnets at home and used those experiences to make sense of what they were seeing in the classroom. 

The ability for students to pull from a wealth of experiences outside the classroom to explain phenomena in the classroom also helps students write with more confidence and ability. Brittany Lavergne, a fourth-grade teacher noted that “before [using the curriculum] we were just trying to get them [students] to have a complete answer, complete idea, a complete sentence. Now we’re getting claims with supporting evidence, with multiple pieces of evidence and student responses that are so much more in depth.”

Dramatic improvement in writing is one of the most oft-mentioned early benefits to implementing phenomenon-driven science curriculum because students write about what they are observing through direct experiences. In fact, they are often eager to write about something they’re curious about or have had experiences with in the past. 

Teachers at Central Intermediate have also seen student writing improve as students transition across grades. Mrs. Lavergne shared that “It just seems like every group we get, they’re better writers. They’re able to express what they’re learning and what they’re thinking. And it’s just an increase from what we had seen the years before.”

The students at Central Intermediate showcased remarkable motivation and confidence in discussing scientific ideas, demonstrating the effectiveness of phenomenon-driven instruction. This approach not only ensures access to quality science education but also acts as a dynamic catalyst for enhancing oral language, vocabulary, and writing skills. The visit to Central Intermediate vividly illustrated the transformative power of phenomenon-driven curriculum, shaping students into well-rounded individuals ready to excel in the scientific community and beyond.

The last year has witnessed a surge in focus on the importance of background knowledge to reading comprehension. Researchers, including Knowledge Matters’ Scientific Advisory Committee, have necessary to effectively cultivate content knowledge in literacy instruction, and policy analysts have in addressing the ‘Science of Reading’. 

This has been a welcome shift in the national conversation about children’s literacy, and one we have been proud to advance.

Naturally, educators want to know how these key research insights and practices should be translated into curriculum design. In our estimation, this is where the conversation needs to be – and also where it has been coming up short. Emerging and evolving curriculum review efforts have not been precise enough in truly informing the field about what defines “knowledge building” in ELA curricula. Rubrics and guidelines that aren’t specific will only produce watered down results that confuse and disappoint. The stakes are too high not to get this right.

The new Knowledge Matters Review Tool identifies eight dimensions to high-quality, content-rich ELA curricula:

· Laser-like focus on what matters most for literacy

· Communal close reading of content-rich, challenging texts

· Systematic development of high-value academic language to support building knowledge

· A volume of reading organized around conceptually coherent texts to build knowledge

· Regular discussions grounded in texts and topics to build knowledge

· A volume of writing to build knowledge

· Targeted supports to ensure all students have access to challenging, grade-level content

· Ease of enacting curriculum

The Knowledge Matters Campaign that have distinguished themselves across each of these eight dimensions. While they differ greatly in their details, all of them do a far better job of building content knowledge than the ELA programs in widest use across the country, including some that have received positive reviews for alignment to standards. 

This new tool is a natural progression of the Knowledge Matters Campaign’s efforts to demonstrate what “good” looks like from the perspectives of leading experts and pioneering educators. The voices we’ve have shown that schools using these curricula are particularly special learning environments, characterized by high-levels of student engagement and support for teachers in making the shift to this way of teaching. By illuminating the design principles behind excellent reading and writing instruction, we hope to advance the pace at which this kind of learning experience, which is far more equitable to students, becomes the norm, rather than the exception, in US schools.

As we add transparency to our review approach, we also wanted to add transparency to our review process. In fact, this tool has a proud heritage.

The authors of the Knowledge Matters Review Tool, Susan Pimentel (StandardsWorks co-founder), David Liben, and Meredith Liben, have a long and storied history of illuminating for educators how standards and curriculum work together. This team served as lead and contributing authors on the Common Core English Language Arts standards, then as authors of the original Publisher’s Criteria and Instructional Shifts that drove the design and development of some of the highest quality ELA curriculum on the market today. For over a decade, these three individuals led important work to support the implementation of college and career-ready standards at Student Achievement Partners.

Sue, David, and Meredith’s work is marked by their careful analysis of research paired with a deep understanding of classroom instruction. This trio’s expertise has brought excellence to our work: first, in the thoughtful curation of leading curricula in the space, and now, in the development of a tool that can be used by the field to make their own assessments.

Our hope now is that more educators and decision makers use this tool to inform their curriculum choices and recognize that the highest-quality curriculum is the scalable, equitable path to ensure strong readers.

My first career was not in teaching. I worked in an HIV Lab in New York City for five years before returning to my home in New Mexico in 2012. While away, I had developed a passion for science, and became convinced that one way I could make a contribution to the community I loved might be to help spark that passion in young people. I wanted to show students that science is more than the boring, read-and-take-notes course that I was subjected to in my youth.

And now, as more people express skepticism for data, I also want to help young people learn how you go about validating it; to understand that data is real and that understanding how to document and interpret it can give one real power.

When I began teaching, New Mexico was just preparing to transition to the . Our district didn’t have an aligned curriculum but, determined as I was to engage my students by sharing with them my lab experience, I embarked on designing lessons based on experimentation and data analysis. My results weren’t steller; the students were still bored. But my proof of concept came when I asked them to analyze video game data. It was here, in what they considered a relevant context, that they started to engage.  

As I became more familiar with the performance expectations of the NGSS, my instinct about the importance of students really understanding data, and how to conduct analyses, was confirmed. Because unlike traditional science assessments that required little math knowledge, the new standards challenged students to analyze charts, graphs, maps and data sets — and to recognize patterns. 

Video games notwithstanding, I struggled to find relevant data for students to use. I even attempted an assignment asking students to find local data and graphs, but that turned out to be far too complicated for middle schoolers. I spent long hours searching for information to fit the new standards, but my lesson plans often failed to engage the students. I found some good project-based lessons, but putting them in any kind of successive order felt disjointed and disconnected. Despite having good standards, understanding what they asked students to know and to be able to do, and with all the best of intentions, instruction in my classroom was still a bit of a mess.   

Things changed in 2018, when a neighboring school in our district that was field-testing OpenSciEd middle school units offered to demonstrate lessons. Because I’d become a bit discouraged by my own less-than-successful efforts, I was excited to give it a try. Our New Mexico Public Education Department offered OpenSciEd workshops, for which I was very grateful. 

What excited me the most about the OpenSciEd curriculum was that it’s modeled after real life scientific research. Standards that required students to memorize content knowledge were replaced by the new “Performance Expectations,” which, in addition to content knowledge, require the steps of scientific inquiry. Instead of teaching students to memorize the order —Observe, Question, Research, Hypothesis, Peer Review — OpenSciEd models the experience I had in the laboratory of solving problems.  

When I was working in a lab, I would become consumed with figuring out a solution to the myriad problems I encountered along the way — and, as we began using the curriculum, I was delighted to see that this was the experience my students were having as well. They really took to their role as scientific investigators! 

“It’s like a puzzle, it’s all out there, just sitting there, pieces broken off, it’s up to you to get that viewpoint,” eighth grade student Shawn Baker told our visitors from the Knowledge Matters Campaign. “Start with one piece and slowly add, add, add — until you have one big understanding.”

And, COVID couldn’t have been a more real-world example to demonstrate to our students the importance of solving problems by utilizing the scientific process. By the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, we collectively became consumed with the importance of scientific literacy and data sense-making.

Each lesson in the OpenSciEd curriculum asks students to look at information, analyze it, and ask themselves what makes sense and what doesn’t. We’re using science literacy skills to look at information and make evidence-based judgments. These are skills and attitudes I didn’t pick up until college. I am proud that I am helping my students learn this at such a young age. They know how to look at a problem and start solving it. If I were an employer, particularly if I were running a lab, I would absolutely be looking for people who have the skills my students are learning from this curriculum.  

These are some of my lessons learned from adopting and implementing OpenSciEd over the years:

1. Don’t be afraid to make the curriculum your own. 
2. There’s a lot of content in OpenSciEd and it can get overwhelming. We’ve all heard the expression, “Go slow to go fast.” That applies here. 
3. Students are doing the heavy lifting with this curriculum, and some of them might not be used to that much thinking. It may be tempting for teachers to revert to their traditional practice of giving students the answers and expecting them to retain it versus discovering it on their own. But investigating it on their own creates more engagement, which helps with information retention. 
4. Be careful what you omit (for pacing or other reasons). When I have omitted things in the past, I have often found that we’ve missed a crucial step in building student comprehension. Every year I teach this curriculum I appreciate more and more how thoughtfully it was constructed.  
5. Grading student work will take longer than in previous years, but it’s worth it. Because of the nature of what they’re doing, the work you’re reviewing provides a real opportunity to recognize where the students are in their understanding and use it to offer useful feedback.   

My best advice is to go for it. Having every student in every class engaged and learning is the payoff. Our kids need and deserve to have science made meaningful to them in the way we’ve been able to with this curriculum.

When you walk into a science classroom at West Feliciana Middle School you will likely see a lot of excited engagement — with students exploring scientific phenomena and making observations about what they see, asking questions and making predictions about the world around them, and conducting experiments to answer their research questions. These activities model the methods of a professional scientific researcher and, while relatively new to the school, are becoming commonplace for our student body.

Ten years ago I was a student at West Feliciana Middle School. While I have always been one of those who succeeded in the standard classroom environment, science classes rarely piqued my interest. Even though school came easily to me, I struggled to pay attention, or even stay awake, during science class. I yearned for opportunities to “get my hands dirty” and try things out for myself. Unfortunately, most of the science classes I experienced utilized what I now understand to be the “sit and get” model, with students sitting silently in their seats while the teacher presented information. Unsurprisingly, this was wildly boring for many of us.

I write this now as a student teacher in the same middle school where I grew up. I’m a senior at Louisiana State University’s GeauxTeach STEM program currently working to earn my full Louisiana teaching certificate. Science is my passion, and my interest in becoming an educator was to inspire that same passion in students from my hometown community. (I have since decided to pursue a medical degree; but that’s another story.)

Luckily for me, my assigned mentor teacher, Sarah Parkerson, was also my seventh-grade science teacher when I was a student at WFMS, providing me with the unique opportunity to compare my classroom experiences of 10 years ago to the experiences that students are currently receiving at WFMS. The contrast truly is remarkable.

WFMS now uses , a middle school science curriculum created to support the , that require so much more of students than those in place when I went through school. At the start of each unit, students are presented with a familiar “anchoring phenomenon.” This phenomenon is then used as a framework to explore the scientific principles and processes laid out in the standards.

In one of our units, for example, the curriculum used a bath bomb as its anchoring phenomenon to teach students about chemical reactions. Almost all of the students in my classes have been familiar with this common bathroom item, but, upon initial probing, my students realized they didn’t have any idea of why or how it worked. We started out the unit by asking questions about the bath bombs.

 “What is it made out of?” “Is the gas trapped inside?” “What happens if you put the bath bomb in a different liquid?” When they dropped the bath bomb in the water, we asked them to make and record their observations. They then performed experiments to see how the mass and properties change before and after dropping the bath bomb in water. We even analyzed the materials in the bath bomb to see what combinations of ingredients would give us similar reactions.

Throughout this entire process, the students were rarely sitting at their desks taking in information and being given explanations by their teacher. They were the ones asking questions and making observations. They took measurements. They conducted mini experiments and analyzed their results. While the activities may have been facilitated by the classroom teacher, it was unquestionably the students who were driving their learning. And it was extremely motivating to them to find answers to their questions. Their curiosity and engagement was sustained throughout the unit.

In the end, our students learned a ton about chemical reactions and how we identify them, based on a common bath item they’d never thought twice about. They came to class excited to do experiments to figure out an explanation behind something that they knew worked but never knew why it worked, bragging to their friends when their predictions turned out to be correct. I’m certain they would not have been nearly as excited to sit in a chemistry classroom and learn the same material from a lecture. I know that I would have preferred the “OpenSciEd” curriculum as a student 10 years ago. I wish I had been taught this way.

I also firmly believe that our student’s retention of scientific knowledge is enhanced by this approach. In our most recent unit, students are learning about the digestive system and our body’s metabolic reactions through the anchoring phenomena of a sick middle school girl named “M’Kenna.” Throughout the unit, these seventh graders are referencing things they learned in their sixth grade OpenSciEd unit about the body’s healing processes as building blocks for what they’re learning now. Through these small but significant references to their sixth grade experiences, my students have shown that they are not only improving their volume of learned science knowledge, but are also making connections to previously learned material. 

I’ve become convinced that inspiring a love for science in young people depends on falling in love with the scientific process itself. As functioning adults we ask questions, make observations and seek connections to answer our questions. On a fundamental level, this is the basic framework that scientific researchers, regardless of their chosen scientific field, work with every day. If we can model this process in our classroom, we can not only introduce the basic scientific process to our students but also improve their problem-solving skills.  

The enthusiasm my students at WFMS have for science, in contrast to the experience my classmates and I experienced a decade ago, makes it abundantly clear that utilizing the scientific process has the power to engage — far more than sitting and memorizing any particular tidbit of scientific knowledge. The fact that students are doing this in a collaborative environment, with their peers, also makes it so much more “real.” And I sincerely hope that this will inspire our students to live their lives as scientists, not just until state testing concludes. 

Robert Emery Godke is a senior at Louisiana State University’s GeauxTeach STEM program and a student teacher in the West Feliciana Parish Schools in Louisiana.

I, Shusheela Valdez, recently had the pleasure of joining the Knowledge Matters School Tour on a visit to Graves County, Kentucky — just down the road from where, a year ago, Mayfield, Kentucky was decimated by a Category 4 tornado. The School Tour traveled to this little community in the southwest corner of the state because of the reputation it had received as a model district for implementation of the OpenSciEd curriculum. We wanted to see what that looked like and learn how it happened. 

For the last eight years, I have trained educators from Kentucky to California on implementing , a high quality open source curriculum aligned with the . I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the instruction in Graves County — and the elegant way in which this amazing curriculum came to life — was the strongest I’ve seen anywhere.

Amanda Hanson is one of two instructional supervisors in the district. We spent some time together processing her district’s story. Below is a transcript of that conversation that has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Valdez: When did you adopt OpenSciEd and why?

Henson: Our journey began back in 2018, not long after the Next Generation Science Standards were adopted. I was visiting many classroom teachers’ rooms at the time and when we saw what our new state assessment in science entailed, we were like, “ow, we are not preparing our students to do this!” I talked to other teachers and we were all pretty overwhelmed at what our kids were expected to do. We knew we needed help and started looking around at what was available. OpenSciEd really rose to the top.

Why was it such a right fit for your district?

One thing is that we’re a huge “cooperative learning” district. All of our teachers are trained on and implement in their classrooms. Students are very familiar with talking and discussing as a group. Our structure is to have students talk in an organized manner, and not opt out — to ensure every voice is heard. So we had that in place and were making some important progress — and then we looked at OpenSciEd and recognized that that’s how it’s designed: it’s designed for that kind of student thinking and student talk. It just fit really well with what we were already doing in the district.

What would you say was the secret of your success?

Without a doubt it was the professional development we received. We knew we couldn’t throw a new curriculum at teachers without providing extensive support. We were extremely fortunate to receive a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York that enabled us to bring in an external partner, Tricia Shelton, chief learning officer for the National Science Teaching Association. We received two days per unit from her, so 12 days total. 

Because we were a “field test” — pilot — district for OpenSciEd, we got additional coaching from NSTA. They wanted to know how the curriculum was working in classrooms. What does this look like? Where do students struggle? Tricia would come in and watch our teachers, co teach with them, model lessons, etc. This was invaluable. The other thing that was great about this is that it conveyed to our teachers a culture of open, continuous improvement. Now we have teachers who can do that modeling, that coaching. If a teacher has a question, our more experienced teachers will say, “Come on in and watch me do this lesson.” And because we’re doing the same thing district wide, we have lots of opportunity for ongoing collaboration and support. 

Tell us a little bit more about the Kagan structure and how you think it’s such a powerful bedrock for OpenSciEd.

Kagan structures allow the teacher to be the facilitator of instruction and OpenSciEd is designed perfectly to encourage this. The OpenSciEd curriculum asks many open-ended, high-level questions. The teacher can pose the question and use a Kagan structure to facilitate student talk in a manner where all students must think and engage in the task. This allows for rich conversation in which the students want to explore the topic and they are in turn taking responsibility for their learning. Students are on task learning and having fun, as well as building a teamlike approach and collaborating with one another. Every student has a role, no one is left out and equal participation happens as students show positive interdependence where they need each other to learn.

What are some of the highlights of the student experience you’re seeing as a result of your implementation of this curriculum?

Students are really exploring, they’re learning, they’re talking, they’re discussing, they’re figuring things out. Most importantly, they’re excited. You saw it in the classrooms you visited. The students were all very focused. There’s not a single student off task. I really think we’re training our students to take ownership of their learning. That’s one of the beauties of this curriculum.  There are guiding questions but the teachers are taught to hold back so that students get engaged in finding the answers for themselves. Our students are really engaged in science.  Across our buildings, it’s one of their favorite subjects.

I also love how kids are learning that it’s ok to struggle, and it’s even OK to be wrong. We saw that in one of the classrooms you visited. One of the students, who happens to be very bright, was wrong about something he’d written down and another student came in and corrected him and it was OK. He even said, “Thank you for helping me”. That’s the culture we want to build for our students. 

Is implementation of this science curriculum supporting your literacy goals?

An additional bonus of OpenSciEd is how reading and writing are embedded into the curriculum. They do a lot of writing, but they hardly notice it because it’s just so natural for them to record what’s happening. And because of how much collaboration there is, they’re constantly explaining their thinking. The curriculum is designed to ensure that students grow in all areas, not just science.

I was two months into my dream job as Lafourche Parish’s director of elementary schools, ready to help lead our district back from COVID, when the second-most destructive hurricane in American history made landfall in south Louisiana. In one short week of 2021, Category 4 Hurricane Ida damaged nearly every one of our school buildings and wreaked havoc on the lives of our families. Our hopes for normalcy — that the pandemic was finally behind us — screeched to a halt. 

Some of our schools were left completely unusable. How were we going to provide for the needs of our 12,000 students? Our superintendent insisted students needed to be brought back on campus sooner than later. By nothing short of a miracle, all students were back to school in eight weeks. 

One year later, the Louisiana Department of Education for the district’s commitment to high quality science instruction and maintaining student growth on the state assessments, despite disruptions from the pandemic and Hurricane Ida. A large celebration, “Making the Impossible Possible,” was held at the local high school. State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley presented our district with a banner marking our comeback. Finally, something to truly celebrate! It was a testament to the resolve of the bayou people. None of this could have been possible, however, had our district not gone through the extensive process four years ago of adopting Amplify Science, which “.”

I was in my former role as a school principal when we implemented the high-quality curriculum. In that position, I experienced first-hand the dramatic change in students being far more engaged and excited about the opportunities they were given with Amplify Science. No more sit-and-get. Science was now about hands-on learning, experiments and problems to solve relevant to their lives.   

When I met with parents, they talked about the topics in Amplify Science. There was a special excitement about the “floating train,” part of a third grade unit on balancing forces. I couldn’t help thinking to myself, “Wow, our students are so turned on, they’re teaching their parents. We’re developing future scientists here. We were engaging girls in science! Students, teachers and parents are all talking about science.”&�Բ�����;

The implementation of Amplify was a pretty seamless one. Unlike with other newly adopted curriculums, we didn’t get much or any pushback. Louisiana had adopted new science standards in 2017 and our teachers were looking for support. Amplify Science addressed the standards and our teachers felt it really gave them confidence with the new content. They loved that everything was all right there for them and embraced learning this new “phenomenon-based” approach.  Any hesitation the teachers had about whether or not the kids could do it was overwhelmed by the kids’ excitement.  

The Knowledge Matters team toured Lockport Upper Elementary when they visited this spring. As I accompanied our visitors into classrooms, I had a chance to see the instruction with fresh eyes, and I was excited by what I saw. Topics were rich. Third graders were reading to find evidence about environmental changes and adaptive traits. Fourth graders were exploring how sound travels. Fifth graders were building terrariums and making predictions about what would happen in them over the coming weeks. In each classroom, science came alive — and evidence was abundant of students growing their speaking, listening, reading and writing skills right alongside their science content knowledge. This was in stark contrast to the direct instruction of science concepts we had used in the past.

Educators told our visitors they were grateful to have a curriculum that provided in one place all the pieces they needed to be effective. They no longer had to spend hours gathering and researching and putting lessons together on their own. They could now spend their time perfecting their craft. They quickly realized that their students were actively engaged in lessons, they were having fun, they were thinking critically, they were reading and writing about science — they were truly learning. There was an overwhelming consensus among educators and families that this shift in science instruction was a welcome one.  

What happened in those two days of the Knowledge Matters tour would give any educator the “frissons,” a French word we use in south Louisiana when we get the chills. It was more than I ever expected — a few of us were even brought to tears. Perhaps best were the students’ voices, saying things like, “Science is fun;” “It’s like magic, but it’s real;” “Science is my favorite subject.”

Our journey is far from complete. There is still much work to be done here in Lafourche Parish Schools. But we know we have laid the groundwork for future success with the help of a high-quality science curriculum. None of this could be done without the dedication of our classroom teachers and support from our families and community. The biggest winners in all of this are our students, the single reason we exist. We are definitely in this to win it for them!

Developing a sense of curiosity was the expectation in my house, so science had always been a part of my life. But, it wasn’t always my favorite class. So it’s been my goal as an educator to change that experience for students — to inspire them with the kind of science education that fills them with a sense of wonder, and to give them the agency that they, too, can be scientists, if they so choose. 

I have taught science for more than 20 years. I’ve been in hundreds of science classrooms, mostly witnessing students compliantly writing notes into graphic organizers, passively watching their teacher explain the parts of the digestive system, for example. I suffered through data reports showing that only certain students — generally those of a certain ethnicity, gender or ability — were successful in science while others were left woefully behind. I watched as teachers worked countless hours to write their own curriculum, gather their own materials and struggle to make lessons work. And, hardest of all, I listened to students share their distaste for their science classes. 

Science is a subject of curiosity, wonder and exploration, but our classrooms did not mirror this. I knew — and the talented educators I worked with knew — that something had to change. 

Then the stars aligned, in a way that rarely happens. California adopted , which, instead of treating learning like a “sit and get,” takes what they call a “three dimensional” approach that moves students from passive learners to curious architects of their own learning. Our teachers were hungry to learn about the new standards, and to better understand the pedagogical shifts they required. The district created a multiyear professional learning plan for all secondary teachers, which our teachers eagerly embraced, spending time away from their classroom and during the summers and weekends to dive deeply into NGSS and realign their instruction to meet those demands. 

And, we needed instructional materials! But, we specifically needed materials that could provide teachers with tools to help students make sense of what they’re learning. We knew that to achieve that, we would need to implement a curriculum that was designed around the pedagogy of NGSS rather than around isolated facts of science. 

In the 2020-21 school year, now on Zoom, our middle school science teachers used the to consider two open source curricula. Teachers were particularly impressed by , noting the curriculum’s intentional connections to sensemaking and previous learnings, while effectively progressing learning. We ultimately selected OpenSciEd for our middle schools. 

Implementing a new curriculum is never smooth, it never fits just right at first, and it never magically solves all of our problems. We knew the instructional shifts and changes required to implement Open SciEd were going to challenge teachers. We wanted to provide teachers the space to try out the pedagogy, to take risks in their classrooms and to be vulnerable as they learned new ways of learning, without high stakes accountability. So we implemented it slowly. We asked teachers to complete two units a year and continue to add two units each year until we implement all units. Teachers are supported in the implementation of each unit with professional learning, including Lesson Studies centered around certain pedagogical moves, such as what OpenSciEd calls the “.”&�Բ�����;

For the last decade, SMUSD has invested significant time and resources to improve the quality of science education, and the proof of our success is in our classrooms. Our students are engaging in learning that is centered around them, that cares about their understanding, and that teaches them to work together to strengthen their understanding of concepts. 

“This collaboration idea doesn’t just apply to science. It applies to everything we are going to do, no matter what career you pursue,” one student said during the Knowledge Matters School Tour visit. “You are going to have to collaborate with everyone else. You and other people are going to have to solve it and work together.”&�Բ�����;

While the change has been challenging, the students are already showing growth, one teacher said, adding that teaching the new lessons becomes easier as time goes on. “I think it’s through the science and engineering practices that we’re really getting kids to express what they know,” another teacher observed. We’re opening their eyes to becoming global citizens.”&�Բ�����;

We are moving in the right direction. We are moving towards a classroom environment where each and every student, no matter their ethnicity, gender or ability, is engaged in building their scientific knowledge and developing their critical thinking, collaboration and communication skills, and most importantly, their confidence in seeing themselves as potential scientists.

“We all know that the teacher knows more than us,” an eighth-grader said during the Knowledge Matters School Tour last month. “They know more, so they have more power. I don’t feel that way in science anymore. My teacher wants to know what I know and what I’m thinking. Nowadays I raise my hand because I know that I have something important to share.”&�Բ�����;

This young man’s words were music to my ears.

Taunton is a small city in southeastern Massachusetts, located 40 miles south of Boston. Our students are culturally and linguistically diverse and come from a range of socioeconomic and educational backgrounds. Traditionally, we have struggled on the MCAS assessment — the state’s standardized exams — and this is especially true in middle school science, where we score at least 10 points below the state average. Our students are curious and engaged and our educators are passionate and dedicated, but this has not been enough to adequately prepare them for science, technology, engineering and mathematics education in high school and beyond.

Two years ago, we began implementing a new science curriculum, , which is available open-source and has gained a real foothold in Massachusetts, in part because we were a partner state in its development.

At the heart of our journey to implement a strong science curriculum has been our determination to provide equitable learning experiences that would help all of our students see themselves as scientists. Students’ reflection during the School Tour visit gives me hope that we are on our way.

“I love that we don’t have to answer every question with a right answer…I can share what I’m thinking and that can make my friend come up with a new idea that helps us both get us closer to understanding,” one student said. Contrasting OpenSciEd with what they used to do, most students cited the lack of endless worksheets and regurgitating of information. “I’m actually learning because I have to share my thoughts and back them up with evidence,” another student shared. 

Prior to our adoption of OpenSciEd, most middle school science teachers wrote their own curriculum. Unfortunately this led to vastly different educational experiences across our four middle schools, exacerbating knowledge and skill gaps when our students entered high school. In 2018, we began to explore what a unified curriculum might do for us and to look for something that was tightly aligned to standards and supported the unique learning needs of middle school students. We also wanted to find something that was culturally responsive, with an emphasis on student voice and choice so that students could see and believe that they are learners and doers of science.  

In OpenSciEd, each grade level has six units or storylines where students grapple with and learn about a scientific phenomenon. The curriculum is aligned to the and provides teachers a pathway to navigate science content and practices in a rigorous fashion while helping students with sensemaking.

In 2019, we had three teachers pilot two units in their classrooms. There was already so much inconsistency from school to school and classroom to classroom that this didn’t feel like a big risk. Once these educators saw their classrooms change — which happened pretty quickly — they were hooked. 

“I will admit that making a shift when I really didn’t have to wasn’t something I welcomed,” said one pilot teacher, who had over 30 years of teaching experience. “After seeing what happened in my first class, an inclusion class, where all of my students were sharing their thinking and learning together, it all changed for me.”

Word of these small successes spread quickly and, in a grassroots fashion, more teachers asked to be involved. One classroom teacher told our visitors from the School Tour that after sitting in on one of the pilot classrooms, seeing all of the post-it notes and posters displaying students’ different ideas and hearing rich scientific discussion happening, he walked away convinced. “After 20 years, I’ve been doing this all wrong,” he said.

Right now, thanks to a grant from the , which supports our professional development, every middle school educator in Taunton is implementing the OpenSciEd curriculum and the high school is piloting newly developed units. This has required a huge cultural and pedagogical shift for our educators.

The motto of OpenSciEd is “go slow to go fast,” and educators often have to remind themselves of this as they reflect on their own teaching. During a School Tour roundtable discussion, a 20-year veteran teacher said he felt like a first-year teacher. But while letting go of his decades-long practices was difficult, he started to see the method unfold successfully among his students.

Another teacher noted that the OpenSciEd pedagogy went against his instincts by letting students talk. But then it occurred to him, “Kids love to talk; the curriculum is leveraging this! We are building a learning community where students are trusting each other and their own thinking for the first time.”

Another teacher noted that she feels teachers sometimes “put kids in boxes based on what we think they are capable of…but if we just let them go, you would be amazed at the quality of their conversations.”

A unique component of the OpenSciEd training is that teachers are asked to play the role of students; to “put on their student hat.” Our teachers were initially hesitant but eventually learned that this shift in perspective is one of the most important aspects of the training. Teachers found it meaningful to be overwhelmed by the feeling of not knowing and then figuring it all out with a colleague.

“Collaborating with a partner to think through a solution is real life and we should be giving our students those experiences,” one veteran teacher noted.

OpenSciEd asks students to share what they know and think in order to make sense of novel phenomena with their peers. It requires a fair amount of vulnerability to share your ideas and not know the right answer. If we want this kind of bravery from our students, educators must be willing to engage in it themselves. Change is difficult. It should feel uncomfortable. From this experience, I’ve learned to lean into that discomfort and trust the curriculum. Be vulnerable in front of your students. That is the best way to teach them that it is OK not to know and to help them build a trusted learning community that will help them do the work of learning together.

Elizabeth Pawlowski is director of STEM for Taunton Public Schools in Massachusetts.

Claymont Elementary School was constructed in 1969 as a high school. It played a pivotal role in our nation’s fight to create fair and equitable schools for all students, being one of two northern Delaware schools named in the landmark Brown v. The Board of Education court order that declared school segregation unconstitutional.

Today, Claymont is a diverse, 800-student K-5 school serving a predominately low-income population. We house Spanish Immersion, the Brandywine Specialized Autism Program, and a gifted and talented program for grades four through eight, in addition to serving a large multilingual learner population.

Claymont’s journey of transformation through the implementation of high-quality instructional materials occurred just as we were being identified by the Delaware Department of Education as an underperforming school. In 2015, just 41 percent of our students were proficient in English Language Arts and only 39 percent were proficient in math. Based on these scores, we became a state “Focus School,” which required developing a plan together with the state for academic improvement.

Claymont was fortunate that, as this was going on in the background, our district office introduced as our response to intervention curriculum for reading. Using Bookworms, we were able to see our students who receive small-group and intensive interventions make progress much more quickly than they had in the past. We attribute this to the systematic focus on foundational skills contained in the program.

“By targeting decoding skills, we can get to fluency much faster,” says Kristen Cook, Brandywine School District’s reading specialist.

We had heard about Seaford’s success using Bookworms with all students in the class. We visited several other districts and asked our teachers to pilot the materials for one week — and everyone became excited to move forward with the curriculum. Rather than implementing at certain grade levels with certain teachers, we chose to dive all-in and bring the curriculum on across the board. We knew there would be growing pains, and we wanted to go through those together as a team. Everyone knew a change was needed — and everyone wanted to be part of the solution.

Our first priority was to map out our professional development plan, and it was extensive. We received support from our district office and coaches at the University of Delaware. We targeted professional development for specific grade levels and specific content. We differentiated our faculty meetings to address areas of concern revealed by the data, which was gathered both from walkthroughs and benchmark assessments. Coaches supported individual teacher needs. And for educators to share resources and strategies that were working, we devoted staff meeting time and made it the crux of our professional learning communities, in which our teachers regularly gather in small groups to collaborate and learn from each other.

What we’ve learned is that despite Bookworms being a relatively structured (some even say “scripted”) curriculum, it actually provides a framework that enables teachers to deliver powerful, student-centered instruction in their classrooms. One structure, for example, is a focus on a high volume of reading for all students. This is supported by a curated library of 275 whole-length, content-rich texts that students read and study across their K-5 experience. What is not to like about scripting that looks like that? What I find interesting is that our teachers don’t “feel the script.” Instead, they talk about how kids love the books.

“One of the parts that I love is hearing kids walking around talking about books,” fifth-grade teacher Brian Horne told us. “I have been teaching for over 20 years and I never remember [that].”

And it’s not just the students. Kindergarten teacher Meredith Allen said that she, herself, gets excited by every book she reads with her students. It might sound to some ears like an oxymoron: that a very structured curriculum is actually driving a much greater love of reading. But that’s our truth.

Just one year later during the 2018 and 2019 school year, based on the Department of Education criteria, Claymont Elementary was identified as an “Exceptional School.” English Language Arts proficiency scores after implementing Bookworms increased over three years to 62 percent from 41 percent. Proficiency scores in math (we adopted around the same time) rose to 60 percent from 39 percent over the same period.

“It’s been an amazing transformation,” fourth-grade teacher Jodi Engleman told our school tour visitors.

Whether with Bookworms or Eureka Math, we attribute our success to the following:

• Implementing the curriculum with full fidelity, monitored via walkthroughs and observations
• Buy-in by staff and teacher commitment to implementing the curriculum, all of which came as a result of staff seeing positive changes early on
• Staff professional development focused on areas of need that are data-driven and teacher-directed
• Coaches and district office staff providing professional development and individual support to staff as needed
• Professional learning community meetings focused on the curriculum including instruction, data, and strengths/weaknesses
• Ensuring we stayed student-focused. From our data to student’s reactions to the curriculum, we wanted to ensure our students were engaged

Change does not happen overnight. The work we do as educators is not easy, but it is necessary. In each student there is greatness, and it is the job of the educator to find it. As we continue this journey, we are excited about the future for our students — and we remain committed to the process of change so that we can help students achieve their greatness.

“If you, as a district leader, are looking at the data and it’s not producing results, change it,” says Lavina Jones-Davis, Brandywine School District’s director of elementary education.

We invite our fellow educators to embrace the change that high-quality curriculum and curriculum-based professional learning can produce. You’ll be glad you did.

Tamara Grimes Stewart is principal of Claymont Elementary School in Wilmington, Delaware.