Bring our innovative learning model into your classroom with our materials for K–12 students. Our materials are made to supplement and enrich your existing curriculum. They focus on boosting engagement through discourse and sense-making and giving you windows into students’ ways of thinking.
Formative Assessment Task Banks
Student tasks that encourage students to think and figure things out. Perfect discussion starters for small group discourse!
Matter Formative Assessment Task Bank for Grades 5–8
- For teachers & coaches
The formative assessments involve gathering and analyzing evidence of students’ thinking, then using what is learned to inform instruction.
Matter Formative Assessment Task Bank for Grades 9–12
- For teacher & coaches
These formative assessments involve gathering and analyzing evidence of students’ thinking, then using what is learned to inform instruction.
Energy Formative Assessment Task Bank
- For teachers & coaches
These formative assessments involve gathering and analyzing evidence of students’ thinking, then using what is learned to inform instruction.
Force & Motion Formative Assessment Task Bank
- For teachers & coaches
These formative assessments involve gathering and analyzing evidence of students’ thinking, then using what is learned to inform instruction.
Genes & Traits Formative Assessment Task Bank
- For teachers & coaches
These formative assessments involve gathering and analyzing evidence of students’ thinking, then using what is learned to inform instruction.
I like to see student misconceptions. For me, a good week is when I can see what they are not understanding.
Jennifer Carroll
4th grade teacher at Turlock Unified School District, CA
Supplemental Student Units
For teachers who want to bring a more complete MSS learning experience to their classrooms, our supplemental student units are designed from the ground up for next generation science classrooms.
Supplemental units are available for grades K–12 as part of a pilot program.
LEARN MOREFree Classroom Resources
Data Sentence Starter Classroom Posters
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
These classroom posters provide a collection of sentence starters to help guide student discussions about data.
Principles of Data-Rich Instruction
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
This resource highlights key principles for supporting data-rich learning for middle and high school students and provides examples of how they may be incorporated in classrooms.
Entryways to Data
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
This one-page resource highlights a data investigation process that includes multiple entryways for engaging learners in data-rich instruction.
Social Emotional Learning within Science Education
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
This one-page resource highlights how social emotional learning — an essential part of growing up and schooling — can be a key component to science education.
Claim, Evidence, Reasoning (CER) handout
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
This handout supports the CER format by providing clear definitions of each term.
Productive Science Talk Handout
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
This handout helps situate the roles of speakers and listeners when engaged in this type of discourse.
Talking to the Text Bookmark
- For teachers
Developed by the Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) at WestEd, these bookmarks are a great tool for students of grades K–12 to use in any subject.
Genetically Speaking Task Blank for grades 5–8
- For teachers & coaches
The “Genetically Speaking” task requires students to read and respond to other students’ ideas about the relationship between genes, chromosomes, and traits.
Placing Hydrogen Task Blank for grades 9–12
- For teachers & coaches
The “Placing Hydrogen” task requires students to consider what they know about atomic structure and the organization of the periodic table of elements.
Food Mind Map Task Blank for grades 5–8
- For teachers and coaches
The “Food Mind Map” task requires students to puzzle through their understanding of what food is by creating a mind map of linking terms.
Energy for Hawks Sample Student Responses for grades 6–8
- For teachers and coaches
The “Energy for Hawks” task connects the concepts of energy and ecosystems, and requires students to think about how organisms get the energy they need to survive.
Massive Air Sample Student Responses for grades 6–8
- For teachers and coaches
The “Massive Air” task promotes student thinking around the concept of gases having mass.
Turtle’s Journey Sample Student Responses for grades 6–8
- For teachers and coaches
The “Turtle’s Journey” task allows students to grapple with making sense of distance-time graphs.
Phenomena-Based Learning
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
This document describes the purpose of using phenomena as a tool for engaging students, and outlines four simple steps to help you incorporate more phenomena into your instruction.
Circuitry Inside a Bulb
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
This handy diagram labels the parts of a bulb and shows the internal circuitry.
MSS Facilitation Principles
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
This PDF contains one blackline master of the MSS Facilitation Principles chart that can be enlarged to poster size.
Habits of Systems Thinking
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
This reference provides 5 helpful things to keep in mind when investigating a system.
Science Quotes
- For teachers and coaches
This PDF contains 2 color posters with quotes from Albert Einstein and Marie Curie.
Types of Models
- For teachers and coaches
The practice of modeling is critical to the work of scientists, but all models have benefits and limitations.
Blood Cell Lineage and Differentiation Diagrams
- For teachers and coaches
This set of handouts provides an overview of the Human Blood Cell lineage and also includes a supporting handout that shows how differentiation occurs in blood cells.
Environmental Diagrams
- For teachers and coaches
This set of three environment diagrams can be used to help situate science learning for a wide range of concepts — from studying organisms across environments to exploring the interactions between Earth’s systems.
Earth’s Orbit
- For teachers and coaches
This diagram provides a birds-eye view of Earth’s orbit and shows the effect of the planet’s tilt at different times of the year.
One Difference! Game
- For teachers and coaches
This game is a fun introduction to one of the key qualities of good experiments.
Properties of Next Generation Science Education
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
This resource highlights just three properties of Next Generation Science Education — multidimensional, phenomenon-based, and equitable.
Converting In-Person Activities to Distance Learning Activities
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
This tip sheet highlights a few key ways to transition common in-person activities to a digital setting.
Supporting Children During Covid-19
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
This tipsheet highlights simple things caregivers can do to ensure children come through this experience happy, healthy, and fully enriched.
Electric Circuits Visual Vocabulary Deck
- For teachers and coaches
These printable cards can be used to support students’ understanding of electric circuits.
Dimensions of Science Education
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
By engaging in learning this way, students develop skills in the practices of science and engineering, adopt the habits of thinking of scientists and engineers, and gain science and engineering knowledge.
Distance Learning During the Covid-19 Pandemic
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
Explore five principles for educators to consider as they make the shift to digital classrooms in response to COVID related school closures.
Tips & Tricks for Interactive Video Sessions
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
With at-home learning, students are no longer captive audiences in a place that is highly focused on learning.
Dimensons of NGSS
- For teachers, coaches, and leaders
This one-page resource outlines eight dimensions of science education that promote equitable engagement of all learners.
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