The Past

I can remember over a decade ago when I was doing professional development with several school districts on elementary science and the Next Generation Science Standards. At the time the NGSS were brand new- and if you know the NGSS you know that they demand several instructional shifts that are not even close to being present in most traditional science materials. So as I would assist elementary teachers in learning about phenomena, and science & engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas, etc…folks would invariably ask, “How are we going to teach this?”

I would talk about starting small and finding ways to elevate a science & engineering practice like Constructing Explanations or Developing and Using Models in an existing science material. I remember working in a district where we brought grade level teams into collaborative work groups to cobble together (I refer to it as Frankensteining) existing science kits, picture books, supplemental materials, and more to design NGSS “like” science learning experiences for K-5 students. It was a lot of work. And it was hard. And it didn’t create a guaranteed learning experience. It created lessons that only a few teachers ended up using.

Teachers would ask why we didn’t have aligned instructional materials to teach the NGSS. I responded that it was going to take time- probably a lot of time- before well-designed elementary science materials would emerge. Over the last decade we’ve seen some “not great” stuff and some “OK” stuff, and a few “pretty great” elementary science materials emerge.

The Present

And now we finally have FREE high-quality open source K-5 science materials. This is so exciting that elementary teachers might now be able to just get online and access well-made science lessons that engage students in figuring out things and not just memorizing science vocabulary words. I’ll be able to use these lessons as objects of study with my preservice teachers and during professional development with inservice teachers. Figuring out how to teach elementary science doesn’t need to be a mystery anymore.

For the fall of 2024 OpenSciEd has released one unit at each grade level K-5. More units will roll out during the 24-25 academic year until the entire K-5 curriculum is released.

The Materials

HERE is the link to the OpenSciEd K-5 page. Below are the Fall 2024 units available:

• Kinder: Why do some surfaces get hot and how can we make them less hot?
• 1st Grade: How can we read under covers when it is dark?
• 2nd Grade: How do wind and water change the shape of the land and what can we do about it?
• 3rd Grade: How can we design objects to balance and move in different ways?
• 4th Grade: Why does an objects motion change?
• 5th Grade: How does a nurse log help other things live and grow?

A Call to Action

Now we all, as a system, just need to care enough to actually start teaching K-5 science as part of a guaranteed and viable K-5 learning experience- regardless of which instructional materials we use. Elementary students love engaging in science and engineering. They absolutely love it. I promise you that the students would vote for science learning every day. But it is us- the adults- who have lots of reasons why science can’t be part of the K-5 daily learning. We have designed a system and a K-5 school day where it feels hard for science “to fit”. We did that. It doesn’t have to be that way.

I look forward to learning about spaces and places where elementary students are getting a chance to engage in wondering about and figuring out the natural world. Because they are going to love it. And that love will create a feedback loop that positively impacts their reading engagement, their speaking & listening practices, their writing skills, their mathematical thinking, and their problem solving abilities. So what can you do to move elementary science learning forward this year in your context?