Curricula & Resources for Educators

A Medical Mystery

A free middle school science program that supports teachers in the effective instruction of an NGSS-aligned, EQuIP-reviewed body systems curriculum unit. Includes the complete middle school science curriculum unit, a teacher’s guide, and an online professional learning course. Visit BSCS' collection of online resources. 

Advancing Reasoning Covariationally (ARC) Curriculum

Alliance for Science Educators (ASET) Toolkit

The ASET Toolkit is a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) planning toolkit designed to help science educators plan lessons and units that integrate the 3 dimensions outlined in the Framework (NRC, 2012). The toolkit includes: 1) Dialogic tools that foster and support deepening awareness and understanding of how to make the significant shifts in instruction, learning, and formative assessment required by the new science reform documents, and 2) Analytical tools for revising existing and/or developing new curriculum that better supports 3-dimensional teaching, learning, and formative assessment of student learning.

Analyzing Instruction in Math using the Teaching for Robust Understanding Framework (AIM-TRU)

The Analyzing Instruction in Math using the Teaching for Robust Understanding Framework (AIM-TRU) learning cycle is the result of a research-practice partnership centered on using the analysis of videocases grounded in high-quality instructional materials for use as a resource for in-service and pre-service professional learning. For videos, materials, slidedecks and a facilitation guide, please visit our website (note: a free user name is necessary to access the materials).

Animated Contrasting Cases in Geometry

In this collection of materials, four geometric topics are covered in animated, digital materials. There are also paper-based materials for the four geometric topics: Angles, Transformations, Pythagorean Theorem, and Volume. These topics are discussed in scenarios of contrasting cases, where two fictional students each present a unique method or solution strategy to the same problem. The goal is then to analyze both methods and discuss similarities and differences, strengths and weaknesses of each. 

CHALK Coaching Website

The CHALK tool is a progressive web application that guides educators to improve instructional quality in early education settings. CHALK provides targeted observation tools that allow instructional coaches to easily track key classroom practices on their digital devices in real-time.

CHANGE Curriculum

Nine units for high school-level Marine Science classes: (1) Ocean Exploration, (2) Marine Geology, (3) Marine Chemistry, (4) Estuaries, (5) Marine Physics, (6) Populations: Producers, (7) Populations: Invertebrates, (8) Populations: Vertebrates and (9) Capstone: Apollo Beach. All of these materials can be potentially repurposed for other high school science courses. The units include lesson plans involving inexpensive, easy to find materials, Powerpoints, downloadable files and an interactive web-based eBook with simulation-based games. Teachers can view the top level, outline of the CHANGE curriculum web-page: https://climatechange.usf.edu/. However, to access the actual materials, they will need to register to get a username, by emailing Dr. Glenn Smith: glenns@usf.edu and metinbesalti@mail.usf.edu

CKT Science Educative Materials

The CKT packets contain tasks, suggested lesson plans, readings, and resources to support teacher educators’ efforts to help elementary teachers develop CKT– specialized knowledge at the intersection of specific content ideas and science teaching practices. 

Common Misconceptions about Heat and Insulation

This article highlights some common misconceptions students have about heat and insulation. It also provides tools for formative assessment and resources for teaching correct scientific concepts.

Connected Biology

Connected Biology provides a sequence of lessons for high school biology that fosters integrated learning of genetics and evolution. This novel curriculum is aligned with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) performance expectations and supports students’ development of a model of the relationships between molecules, cells, organisms, and populations. The curriculum package includes online lessons, an interactive Teacher’s Edition, and a real-time Teacher Dashboard. Additional background materials and supplemental resources are also provided.

COVID-19 Curriculum Materials

This resource presents a curricular module for high school biology classes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The module is made up of 8 lessons that will likely take about 10-15 hours of instructional time. Major themes of the module include viral transmission, media literacy, data analysis, argumentation, and modeling. The following driving questions are explored:

• How do viruses such as COVID-19 spread?
• What is the responsibility of governments, organizations, and individuals in mitigating the spread of deadly viruses?
• What challenges do social vulnerabilities present as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?

Individual lessons descriptions are provided along with Teacher Guides that provide rationales for many of the design decisions made and suggestions for implementation.

CRIS 7e Lesson Plan Template

This lesson plan template centers the importance of including Elders and Environment in Indigenous STEM teaching and learning, and is a way for teachers to weave Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Western Science into lessons.

CS-STEM Network

The CS-STEM Network offers research-based curricula created by Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy that focus on teaching big ideas with robotics. Over 20 curriculum options provide support for LEGO, VEX, Arduino, and Virtual robot platforms in this Learning Management System.

Data Nuggets

Data Nuggets are free classroom activities, co-designed by scientists and teachers, designed to bring contemporary research and authentic data into the classroom. Students are guided through the entire process of science, including identifying hypotheses and predictions, visualizing and interpreting data, making evidence based claims, and asking their own questions for future research.

Design Technology and Engineering Education (DTEEL) Curriculum

Design Technology and Engineering Education (DTEEL) for bilingual English Learner Students is a K-5th grade curriculum focused on language development through engineering design and problem solving. Each grade level includes a series of units focused on different aspects of engineering: Materials, Structures, Mechanisms, and Work & Energy. The last two grade levels add units that synthesize these engineering components with a Systems focus on Systems. Each lesson includes instructional strategies to strategically integrate language use and engineering content.

Disruptions in Ecosystems

Disruptions in Ecosystems is a middle school curriculum unit with supporting teacher materials. The unit includes five chapters, each focused on a specific phenomenon related to ecosystem disruption, including questions around the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone and the invasion of zebra mussels in the Great Lakes and Hudson River.

Early Math with Gracie & Friends

Play nine math learning apps and dozens of hands-on activities at home or in the classroom. A digital Teacher's Guide supports use in the classroom, and a digital Family Fun Guide provides activities to do at home.

Early Science with Nico & Nor

Explore six early science learning apps and dozens of hands-on activities. Use the digital Teacher's Guide to implement the technology-based science curriculum into preschool classrooms.

EarSketch Workspace & Curriculum

EarSketch helps you learn core topics in computer science, music, and music technology in a fun, engaging environment. You learn to code in Python or JavaScript, two of the most popular programming languages in the world, while manipulating loops, composing beats, and applying effects to a multi-track digital audio workstation. To start learning to write code and make music, click the Start Coding button and use the integrated online curriculum.

Earth Science Resources

This online collection of transformative geoscience resources includes Earth system models, data visualization tools, and curriculum modules. Each module is designed for middle and high school students and is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. Teacher Editions, which include detailed background information, tips, and exemplar student responses, are available to help teachers guide their students through each module. Classroom management tools, reports, and a real-time dashboard to help teachers track their students' progress are also available through the Learn portal. Validated pre- and post-assessments for each module are provided.

Easy Global Climate Modeling (EzGCM) Toolkit

EzGCM is a climate modeling toolkit that allows students to examine climate change using the same tools and following the same scientific processes as climate scientists.

Eco-Inquiry Teaching Materials

This collection offers K-12 curricula, activity guides, and other resources to support hands-on, inquiry-based investigations of the ecosystems and organisms around us. Themes include: Hudson River ecology, urban ecosystems, schoolyard ecology, biodiversity, water and watersheds, and data exploration and nature of science. Additional resources are available for home and distance learning.

ecoXPT

EcoXPT is an immersive simulation in which students use inquiry to learn how ecosystems work.

Ed+gineering Lesson Plans

This site provides three synchronous and six asynchronous culturally responsive lessons for integrating engineering in elementary classes.

EDC Earth Science

This high school curriculum offers over 61 data-intensive Earth Science investigations, all set in real-world contexts and includes a variety of other activities, including topical fiction and non-fiction readings and research projects and presentations that build critical life and scientific literacy skills. 

Energy and Equity Curricular Resources

This resource library offers curricular materials for teaching energy and equity in high school physics.

Energy and Your Environment (EYE)

A 10-week, energy literacy curriculum unit for 6th grade students. Students will study energy use and transfer in their own school buildings. They will explore how Earth systems supply renewable and nonrenewable energy, and how these energy sources are transformed and transferred from Earth systems to a school building to meet its daily energy requirements.

Energy3D

Energy3D is a simulation-based engineering tool for designing green buildings and power stations that harness renewable energy to achieve sustainable development. Users can quickly sketch up a realistic-looking structure or import one from an existing CAD file, superimpose it on a map image (e.g., Google Maps or lot maps), and then evaluate its energy performance for any given day and location. Based on computational physics and weather data, Energy3D can rapidly generate time graphs (resembling data loggers) and heat maps (resembling infrared cameras) for in-depth analyses. Artificial intelligence is also used to support generative design, engineering optimization, and automatic assessment. At the end of the design, Energy3D allows users to print it out, cut out the pieces, and use them to assemble a physical scale model.

eRebuild

eRebuild is a math learning game for students in grades 6th-8th. The game focuses on teaching the concepts of geometery and ratios and proportions through gameplay.

Evolution: DNA and the Unity of Life

"Evolution: DNA and the Unity of Life" is an eight-week, comprehensive curriculum unit that sharply illuminates the underlying role of genetics in evolution by maintaining a conceptual connection to DNA and heredity throughout.

Exploring Infectious Diseases

This site provides an engaging and scientifically accurate set of instructional materials and resources aimed at deepening high school students’ understanding of infectious diseases (including Ebola and COVID-19) and enhancing students’ skills in seeking out additional information they need to make informed decisions, and influence their behaviors in response to future outbreaks and epidemics that undoubtedly will occur.

Extended Reality Initiative: 360 Videos of Teaching/Learning Mathematics

This website provides a growing repository of 360 videos of classroom instruction (currently focusing on elementary mathematics). We also have created and are disseminating tutorial videos for using or creating similar media.

Family Science Activities

Each short video provides ideas for family science activities for preschool-grade 3 students that reinforce NGSS 3D learning.

Focus on Energy Curriculum

Three short (4-5 session) curriculum units and an engineering design challenge include firsthand, guided explorations of energy in everyday phenomena. Beginning with easily observable phenomena, such as ball collisions, students look for signs of energy, create and use a variety of representations including "energy cubes," and discuss questions and findings. They develop the practice of asking, "Where does the energy come from?" and "Where does the energy go?" and learn to track the flow of energy in increasingly complex scenarios.

Fraction Activities and Assessments for Conceptual Teaching (FAACT)

The Fraction Activities and Assessments for Conceptual Teaching (FAACT) instructional program is designed to support teachers’ insights into students’ conceptual understandings of fractions. The overall program goal is to foster a deep conceptual understanding of fractions as quantities for students with LD and math difficulty. FAACT is designed from validated learning trajectories, which consist of a learning goal, developmental stages of thinking, and activities designed to explicitly promote the stages of thinking. The program also includes prompts for teachers to use to support students’ thinking as they solve problems. Finally, talk moves are included for teachers to use to facilitate conversation among students as they work in small group intervention settings.

Getting Unstuck Scratch Curriculum

Getting Unstuck is a 10-module intermediate Scratch curriculum to help your students develop greater creative and conceptual fluency with code. The curriculum reimagines the classroom as a design studio: a culture of learning in which students explore, create, share, and reflect. Get started with the curriculum by reading the orientation, then explore the modules.

Graphing Research on Inquiry with Data in Science (GRIDS) Curricular Units

Three middle school science curricular units on the topics of genetics, ocean biodiversity & discourse, and solar ovens & design critiques.

High-Adventure Science

High-Adventure Science brings several of the big unanswered questions in Earth and space science to middle and high school science classrooms: What is the future of Earth's climate? Will there be enough fresh water? Is there life in space? Will the air be clean enough to breathe? Can we feed the growing population? and What are our energy choices? Each module includes interactive computer-based systems models and real-world data on unanswered questions scientists are facing today.

Hurricane Risk & Impact

Students will use the Hurricane Explorer model to explain and predict how the path and strength of a hurricane can change, investigate real-world case studies on the risk and impact of hurricanes, and explore the effect of rising global temperatures on hurricanes.

I-Engineering Curriculum Resources

In the "How can I make my classroom more sustainable?" unit,  teachers and students collaboratively investigate how to make their classrooms more sustainable.  Using the teaching/learning process of Engineering for Sustainable Communities (EfSC), and two design challenges, students engage meaningfully in both the practices of engineering and the disciplinary core ideas of energy systems, transformations and sources (within the contexts of circuitry & renewable energy). To make engineering more accessible to a wider range of learners, I-Engineering situates the engineering work in real world contexts and constraints, and focuses on both the technical and social dimensions to design work.

InquirySpace Investigations

A set of NGSS-aligned investigations for each discipline (physics, chemistry, biology) designed to introduce and scaffold engagement in science practices and build an understanding of the interplay between experimental design, data collection, analysis, and explanation. In the process of investigating their world, students generate data using traditional lab tools, sensors, and simulations, then bring their data into our Common Online Data Analysis Platform (CODAP), which was developed specifically to facilitate sensemaking with data.

Institute for Native-serving Educators (INE) Curriculum Units

This collection provides K-12 math and science curriculum units and practice guides authored by INE educators, as well as culturally responsive resources for educators and counselors.

Interactions Curriculum

This NGSS aligned curriculum is designed to support high school physical science students in developing an understanding of the forces and energy involved in atomic and molecular interactions. The year-long Interactions curriculum could be used in a physical science class, or tweaked to embed activities into a chemistry class. Interactions can be offered as a paper-pencil curriculum with the teacher facilitating web based simulation activities on a classroom computer, or it can be offered completely online for classrooms where students have personal (or shared) computers. Students will develop and use models of interactions at the atomic molecular scale to explain observed phenomena and develop a model of the flow of energy and cycles of matter for phenomena at macroscopic and sub-microscopic scales.

Journey to El Yunque Curriculum

The Journey to El Yunque curriculum introduces students to disturbance ecology, with a focus on both ecosystem resilience and ecosystem change. Each page is beautifully illustrated by Puerto Rican artist Robert Casilla to connect students with Puerto Rican culture as well as help generate curiosity and interest as students move through the curriculum. Students use interactive models to explore how limiting factors, such as the availability of food or shelter, impact the population dynamics of different species following a hurricane. Students engage with interactive models of population dynamics that are based on real-world data gathered by our partners at the Luquillo Long-Term Ecological Research program in Puerto Rico. The data from these models serve as evidence for students’ scientific arguments about the impact of hurricanes on specific species in the rainforest. (Teacher materials can be requested from demo@elyunque.net)

Knowledge Assets to Support the Science Instruction of Elementary Teachers (ASSET)

Support materials for teaching about the particle model of matter and interdependent relationships in ecosystems at the upper elementary level.

LaCuKnoS Project Virtual Professional Development Series

This series includes lessons and professional development video sessions focused on: multilingual learning strategies for STEM, culturally responsive strategies for STEM, knowledge building strategies for STEM, semantic waving in science instruction, and autonomy touring in science instruction.

LEAP Early Algebra Curriculum

The LEAP program is the first early algebra curriculum for students in grades 3-5. The program includes 18-20 one-hour lessons at each grade level and teacher support and assessment. Professional development  is also available. 

Life Right Here & Everywhere (LRHE) Curriculum

With the LRHE curriculum, student learning is used in the generation of solutions to local problems, such as increasing indigenous populations of insects within local urban neighborhoods. The learning approach—solutioning—emphasizes learning life science content through the NGSS science and engineering practices.

Linear Algebra and Geometry

Linear Algebra and Geometry is aimed at preservice and practicing high school mathematics teachers and advanced high school students looking for an addition to or replacement for calculus. The materials are organized around carefully sequenced problems that help students build both the tools and the habits that provide a solid basis for further study in mathematics. Requiring only high school algebra, it uses elementary geometry to build the beautiful edifice of results and methods that make linear algebra such an important field.

Math Mapper

A digital tool that offers compelling student middle grades math problems and provides students with assessment tools and a dynamic learning map.

Math Pathways & Pitfalls Algebra Readiness: Lessons and Teaching Guide, Grades 7–8

The Math Pathways & Pitfalls K-8 curriculum was designed with built-in support for teachers, alignment to the Common Core State Standards and Mathematical Practices. The curriculum can be flexibly used as an intervention, as part of the core curriculum, or in after-school or small group settings.

Mathematical and Computational Methods for Planning a Sustainable Future (PS-Future)

Instructional modules that bring sustainability topics into classrooms in a way that emphasizes the methods and tools of mathematics and computing and illustrates their role in planning for sustainability. Through the modules, students learn foundational and emerging concepts in mathematical and computational sciences set in the context of sustainability issues involving physical, biological, environmental, and social sciences. Students develop an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the ways that these disciplines interact through inquiries driven by real problems such as combating invasive species, understanding environmental threats, managing water resources, interpreting weather data, and simply living greener.

Mathematical Modeling Lesson Gallery

This gallery contains 12 community-based mathematical modeling lessons for use in the elementary grades. Also available are math modeling vignettes, a Culturally Responsive Mathematics Teaching (CRMT) framework, and other tools.

Mathematically Captivating Learning Experiences

Learning experiences that spur student curiosity, captivate students with complex mathematical content, and compel students to engage and persevere (referred to as “mathematically captivating learning experiences” or “MCLEs”). Designed using mathematical story framework, the content within mathematical lessons (both planned and enacted) is framed as mathematical stories and the felt tension between how information is revealed and withheld from students as the mathematical story unfolds is framed as its mathematical plot.

MEL Teaching Resources

The MEL project has developed a set of teaching resources to support the teaching of controversial and/or complex Earth and space science topics.

Model My Watershed

Model My Watershed is a watershed-modeling web app that enables citizens, conservation practitioners, municipal decision-makers, educators, and students to analyze real land use and soil data in their neighborhoods and watersheds; model stormwater runoff and water-quality impacts using professional-grade models; and compare how different conservation or development scenarios could modify runoff and water quality.

Modeling Hydrologic Systems in Elementary Science (MoHSES)

Third-grade students’ use model-based reasoning about geospheric components of the hydrologic cycle (i.e., groundwater) and how elementary teachers scaffold students’ model-based reasoning. Instructional resources developed through this project include supplemental teacher materials, a student packet, and student assessment (with answer key).

Moon Phases & Eclipses

Moon Phases & Eclipses is a free and innovative 3-day unit that provides interactive videos, hands-on activities, lesson plans, and student worksheets to explore why the Moon's phase changes.

Motivation – Planning Lessons to Activate eNgagement in Science (M-PLANS) Toolkit

This toolkit lays important groundwork to help teachers successfully enact motivation design principles (MDPs) in support of student motivation and engagement in science. It addresses the reciprocal relationship between motivationally supportive teaching and equitable science instruction and provides guidance on general classroom organization, routines, policies, and climate considerations that provide a vital foundation for supporting student motivation. The toolkit contains resources for the five MDPs: belonging, confidence, learning orientation, autonomy, and relevance. It describes connections between enacting the MDPs and delivering instruction based on the NGSS and outlinines the reciprocal relationship between supporting student motivation and implementing phenomenon-centered science instruction, integrating crosscutting concepts, and promoting the eight science and engineering practices from the NGSS.

Next Generation Science Assessment (NGSA) Task Portal

This portal contains classroom-ready assessments for elementary and middle school teachers to use formatively to gain insights into their students’ progress on achieving NGSS performance expectations.

Next Generation Science Assessment Tasks

Assessment tasks intended to support teaching and learning in classrooms that are enacting NGSS-aligned instruction, and to gain insights into grades 3-8 students’ progress in building proficiency with NGSS performance expectations (PEs). The tasks are designed to increase access and engagement for students with a range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, linguistic abilities, and learning differences.  The tasks include web-based tools to integrate computational models, which students can manipulate to explore phenomena, to generate data for a scientific argument, or to carry out an experiment. Teachers can select tasks to use with their students and assign them to be completed individually, in small groups, or during whole class instruction. As students complete the assessment tasks online, teachers can monitor student progress in real-time. The assessment portal links scoring rubrics to tasks to help teachers understand and evaluate which aspects of student work show progress toward mastery of the targeted 3-D integrated knowledge. Using these rubrics, teachers can provide online feedback to individual students.

Ocean Tracks

Use the Ocean Tracks interactive map, curricular modules, and data analysis tools to explore and quantify patterns in the migratory tracks of marine animals in the northern Pacific Ocean and relate these behaviors to fluctuations and trends in physical oceanographic variables.

PhET Interactive Simulations

Collection of 158 free interactive math and science simulations from University of Colorado Boulder. Engage students in math and science practices, and virtual labs, during remote learning. Find over 2,000 sim-based lessons under teacher resources. 

PlantingScience Investigations

This collection of 10 investigations offers collaborative, NGSS-aligned plant science lessons for middle and high school that include guides for students, teachers, and mentors.

Plate Tectonics

The Plate Tectonics module "What will Earth look like in 500 million years?" helps students build a systems view of plate tectonics through focused case studies and interactions with the Seismic Explorer (A data visualization tool) and Tectonic Explorer (a dynamic plate tectonics model). 

Practical Measures, Routines, and Representations

This resource collection offers practical measures and guidance for instructional improvement in mathematics teaching. These include measures for use in classrooms, collaborative professional learning, and one-on-one coaching.

Project CARe Student Tasks

This site provides three online activities focused on covariational reasoning as a foundation for middle school students to build more abstract algebraic knowledge. These tasks provide students with opportunities to understand static points, understand dynamic points, and make sense of different amounts of change.

Proportions Playground

Proportions Playground is designed to build understandings of proportional reasoning.

Quality Talk Resource Library

This library contains lessons and tools designed for preservice teachers that focus on argumentation, or quality talk, in high school science.

Research Quest

Research Quest is a series of science investigations designed to improve students’ critical thinking skills. Registration and use is free! Parents can also sign up free for Research Quest Live, hosted by a live museum education facilitator (https://nhmu.utah.edu/rq-live).

Responsive Instruction for Emergent Bilingual Learners in Biology (RIEL Biology) Lesson Plans

This resource collection includes lessons for nine biology themes and content areas: matter and energy transformation, organization and development of living organisms, earth systems and patterns, energy, interdependence, heredity and reproduction, diversity and evolution of living organisms, the practice of science, and integration of knowledge and ideas. It also offers lessons for six different instructional elements: multiple modalities, funds of knowledge, collaboration, affirming identities, sociopolitical consciousness, and attention to language.

Responsive Math Teaching Resources

This collection of Responsive Math Teaching (RMT) professional learning resources includes the RMT model, planning and coaching protocol, lesson plan templates, and frameworks for discussing learner thinking and facilitating productive struggle.

Responsive Mathematics Teaching Toolkit

This site offers professional learning materials for teachers, including a Responsive Mathematics Teaching Toolkit and Lesson Planning and Analyzing Tools.

SageModeler

The SageModeler systems modeling tool facilitates student exploration and understanding of phenomena through the development of their own computational models. Students can validate their models by comparing model output to real-world data sources or output from experimental simulations. The intuitive drag and drop interface for creating and linking system components does not require formal programming or equation writing, making it possible for a wide range of ages and abilities to engage in modeling, systems thinking, and computational thinking.

SAIL Garbage Unit

School, home, and neighborhoods make large amounts of garbage every day. In answering the driving question of the unit, “What happens to our garbage?”, students investigate a series of subquestions (e.g., “What is that smell?” and “What causes changes in the properties of garbage materials?”) that address a targeted set of physical science and life science performance expectations. This unit was developed with a specific focus on English learners by using an engaging, local phenomenon and design principles that capitalize on the mutually supportive nature of science and language learning.

Schoolyard SITES Curriculum Workbook & Citizen Science Guide

This curriculum workbook details a design process for engaging elementary students in citizen science investigations that are relevant to their school district’s curriculum and school site. The citizen science guide is designed to help users critically examine potential citizen science projects to determine whether they can be easily adapted for use in a classroom curriculum and schoolyard setting.

Science Teachers Learning from Lesson Analysis (STeLLA) High School Biology Units

This collection of curriculum units focus on the biology topics of natural selection, matter and energy, and genetics. Each unit contains a series of lessons, videos, and materials for students and teachers.

Seasons

Seasons is a free and innovative 8-day unit that provides interactive videos, hands-on activities, lesson plans, and student worksheets to explore the causes behind Earth’s seasons.

Seeds of Algebraic Thinking

Seeds of Algebraic Thinking are sub-conceptual resources coming from life experience that students call upon when responding to mathematical prompts. This site includes resources students could activate when thinking about groups and sets, equality, proportionality and ratio reasoning, and functions.

Seismic Explorer

Explore the pattern of earthquakes on Earth, including magnitude, depth, location, and frequency.

Sensing Science Apps

Sensing Science has created several free educational apps for iPads to build conceptual understanding of matter and its changes in kindergarten students. Related resources and support materials are available.

SmartGraphs: Algebra

The Concord Consortium has developed 19 activities for teaching and learning algebra that are available online or as an app for iPad or Android tablet computers. These activities—which cover a variety of algebra topics, from linear equations to transformations of functions—help students develop skills creating and using algebraic functions and graphs to solve problems. Hints and scaffolds support learners who need help.

SOLID Start K-2 Curriculum Materials

SOLID Start (Science Oral Language and Literacy Development from the Start of School) curricula are guided by a driving question and puzzling phenomena that engage young students and elicit their natural curiosities. The units are designed to support young students’ science learning and oral language and literacy development.

Spiral Notebook App

The Spiral Notebook app is a digital portfolio tool that enables teachers to efficiently capture multiple representations of classroom practice via documents, images, and videos, and organize, share, and discuss evidence of student thinking reflected in these multimedia artifacts.

STEP UP Curriculum

High school physics lessons designed to empower teachers, create cultural change, and inspire young women to pursue physics in college. The lessons build a counternarrative in the classroom, dismantling the commonly-held stereotypes of what physics is and who physicists are, which opens possibilities in students’ minds for pursuing physics in college.

Storyline Frameworks for Educators

Do you want to learn more about complex ecological systems, nature-culture relations, and field-based science? These storyline frameworks are designed for educators working in a variety of places (community-based organizations of all types, homes, schools). Each framework provides in-depth, research-based information about its topic, as well as a variety of appendices that help educators put their new learning into practice. These include vignettes that show the ideas in practice and a self-assessment that educators can use to reflect on their current and future thinking and practice.

StoryMaker

StoryMaker is a powerful learning platform developed by PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs to build the next generation of media creators through media-making projects. These lesson plans and activities provide a strong foundation of storytelling and journalism skills to help students gain confidence, find their voice, and discover their place in the world.

Teaching STEM with Robotics: 10 NGSS-Plus-5E Lessons

10 NGSS-Plus-5E middle school lessons for teaching STEM with robotics.

Teaching STEM with Robotics: Common Core State Standards-Aligned Lessons

22 Common Core State Standards-aligned middle school lessons for teaching STEM with robotics.

Tectonic Explorer

Use a fictional Earth-like planet to explore plate tectonics as a system of interacting plates.

TEEMS Curriculum

Transforming Engineering Education for Middle Schools (TEEMS) is a free engineering curriculum for gr. 6-8 learners with units on the engineering design process and materials and tools that connect engineering to NGSS science topics of waves, matter and its interactions, body systems, Earth’s systems, Earth’s place in the universe, and evolution.  View the Website for Teachers | Website for Student Resources

The Argumentation Toolkit

The Argumentation Toolkit is a collection of resources, including classroom videos, strategy guides and professional learning modules, designed to help teachers understand and teach scientific argumentation.

The DiALoG Science Argumentation Tool

DiALoG stands for Diagnosing the Argumentation Levels of Groups. It is designed for teachers to formatively assess the quality of evidence-based arguments and to guide the selection of instructional responses designed to Improve the quality of students’ arguments. DiALoG assesses two important aspects of group argumentation – how well students construct their own evidence-based arguments (the INTRApersonal) and how well students are able to reconcile differences with others to co-construct meaning (the INTERpersonal). The DiALoG system includes the DiALoG tool itself, along with the accompanying Responsive Mini Lessons (RMLs) and User Guides (UGs).

Three-Dimensional Rural Science Lesson Plans

These high-quality, NGSS-aligned science lesson plans are built on phenomena meaningful to rural students. They include plans for middle school science, as well as high school biology, Earth science, chemistry, and physics.

Tips for Using Videos to Teach Math Remotely

The Flipped Mathematics Study offers advice on how to use video to teach math remotely.

Together-Juntos Math Professional Learning Modules

These professional learning modules are designed for use by teacher educators, professional development facilitators, teacher leaders, school or district leaders, family engagement coordinators, and those in similar roles in schools and communities. Most of the materials are intended to be implemented with caregivers and teachers together, and some activities are designed for just teachers. They are structured for you to select what is useful and adapt the materials for your own context and the needs of your community.

Tools for Ambitious Science Teaching

Choose from a series of videos that demonstrate ambitious teaching.

Transforming Scientific Practices Through Teacher Leadership Place-based Curriculum

This NGSS-aligned place-based curriculum features experiential, field-based, inquiry-oriented K-12 learning activities that incorporate real-world applications integrating Hawaiian and 21st Century STEA²M. It includes atmospheric, biology, and geology lessons, as well as teacher-created Hawaiʻi and American Samoa lessons.

Transition to Algebra (TTA) Curriculum

The Transition to Algebra (TTA) curriculum seeks to quickly give students the mathematical knowledge, skills, and confidence to succeed in a standard first-year algebra class and to show them that they can explore mathematics and actually enjoy it. TTA is a full-year algebra support curriculum that can run concurrently with first-year algebra. It is designed to build students' algebraic habits of mind as they explore algebraic logic puzzles that connect to and extend algebra course topics and learn broadly applicable tools and strategies to help them make sense of what they are learning in algebra. Students discuss and refine their ideas as they work through mental mathematics activities, written puzzles, spoken dialogues, and hands-on explorations that engage them in cultivating mathematical knowledge, intuition, and skills.

Understanding Ebola

This is a free resource to educate the public about Ebola. The website includes an interactive model that allows teachers, students, and community members to actively explore the factors that influence a disease’s spread and mortality rate. Visit BSCS' collection of online resources. 

Urban Ecology Curriculum for English Learners Module 2 : Patterns of Urban Land Use (2nd Edition)

The Urban Ecology Curriculum for English Learners is an interdisciplinary, standards-based, upper elementary/middle school curriculum designed to bolster English language and literacy learning for Long Term English Learners (LTELs)1, or students “at risk” of becoming LTELs by providing access to rigorous, STEM content. Module 2 explores patterns in urban land use.

Urban Ecology Curriculum for English Learners Module 1: Introduction to Urban Ecology (2nd Ed.)

The Urban Ecology Curriculum for English Learners is an interdisciplinary, standards-based, upper elementary/middle school curriculum designed to bolster English language and literacy learning for Long Term English Learners (LTELs)1, or students “at risk” of becoming LTELs, by providing access to rigorous, STEM content. Module 1 provides foundational knowledge and experiences for students, as well as a through description of urban ecology as a science.

VISIONS Project K–12 Resources

These resources are designed to help put high-quality, equitable math instruction into practice. The VISIONS Project fosters collaboration among state, district, and school-based leaders; mathematics teachers; mathematicians; and researchers who co-design essential tools for all grade levels.

Visual Access to Mathematics Resources

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic school closures, the VAM project compiled example strategies, tasks, and apps for supporting students who are English learners (ELs) in mathematics, with information about how to adapt these examples to remote learning. Online workshops related to the resources and strategies were also offered for educators. 

Wake: Tales from the Aqualab

In this free life sciences learning game, middle school students can play as a young scientist faced with scientific challenges across multiple oceanic ecosystems. Wake: Tales from the Aqualab addresses the NGSS practices of experimentation, modeling, and argumentation in the context of food webs, environmental stressors, and ecological restoration. Wake is compatible with Chromebook, PC or Mac with Internet access and available in English and Spanish.

Wildfire Risks & Impacts

The Wildfire Module asks students to consider the question, "How will wildfire risks and impacts change over the next 100 years?" This five-activity module helps students build an understanding of the variables that influence fire spread rate and intensity, the risks that wildfires bring to people and their communities, and the impact of climate change through focused case studies and interactions with the Wildfire Explorer model.

WISE: Web-based Inquiry Science Environment

Free, standards-aligned, and research-based inquiry curricula that address NGSS 3D proficiency. Includes Interactive scientific models plus hands-on activities, personalized guidance, and rich embedded assessments. For teachers, WISE offers a a virtual workshop for customizing WISE units for distance learning.

Young Mathematicians Math Games

Fun and easy to use math games designed for children ages 3 to 6-years-old. Some games are quick and use everyday materials; others use a game board for more extended play. All of the games can be played multiple times and their difficulty can be increased or decreased to target a “just right” level of challenge for children as they gain proficiency.