The OpenSciEd Approach
The OpenSciEd approach highlights two key instructional shifts in the Next Generation Science Standards: phenomena-based teaching and the importance of coherence.
Designed and aligned to the Framework and NGSS.
Based on research regarding how students learn, what motivates learning, and the implications for teaching.
Developed with educators and extensively field-tested by teachers and schools.
- Students are making sense of a phenomenon or problem, connecting each lesson across time and providing meaning during a lesson
- Units are based on a science storyline (Reiser, Novak & McGill, 2017), a coherent sequence of lessons where each step is driven by students’ questions that arise from their interactions with phenomena.
- Students work through the classroom’s questions through science and engineering practices to figure out the unit’s phenomena or solve identified problems.
Instructional Model
The OpenSciEd Instructional Model uses a storyline approach– a logical sequence of lessons that are motivated by students’ questions that arise from students’ interactions with phenomena.
To help teachers and students advance through a unit storyline, the instructional model takes advantage of five routines. The routines typically follow a pattern as students kick off a unit of study, investigate different questions they have, put the pieces together from those investigations, and then problematize the next set of questions to investigate.
The Driving Question Board
The Driving Question Board is an essential tool used throughout the OpenSciEd units as a way to generate, keep track of, and revisit student questions that drive the investigation of the anchoring phenomenon and related phenomena.
