One of the goals of the Next Generation Science Standards is to make science accessible to all students, which includes students with disabilities such as blindness and visual impairments (BVI). However, educators of students with BVI have limited experience providing scientific investigations for this population. Carabajal et al., ( 2017) and Miles et al. ( 2022), have shared research that provides information and accommodations for students with BVI learning Earth Science. While challenging, teachers willing to facilitate science instruction with modified and assistive tools will help ensure the success of their BVI students in the classroom.

Freshman general science students already know the atom is composed of a nucleus containing protons and neutrons with electron circling the nucleus. This hands-on modeling lab allows students to visualize and discover the electrons mass is far less and negligible compared to the nucleus. They probably have been told this in previous science classes through memorization.

All students should have opportunities to investigate issues related to their personal interests and community priorities. Teachers value these goals but often lack materials that follow students' meaningful questions about phenomena while meeting standards. This article highlights strategies for developing materials that address standards rigorously and engage diverse student interests and community priorities. The strategies include choosing meaningful phenomena, building relevance, supporting understanding of how human systems shape phenomena and problems, and enabling equitable participation through educative guidance in materials. We illustrate these strategies by highlighting how a consortium of educators and researchers created the OpenSciEd instructional materials for high school, presenting examples of how they are reflected in courses in biology, chemistry, and physics. These materials use a storyline model centered on students’ questions about phenomena and addresses all high school NGSS performance expectations. The article also discusses how teacher teams can adapt these strategies to their local contexts, using resources like student surveys, Universal Design for Learning, and community-based investigations to make science education more inclusive and relevant for students from nondominant groups and communities.

Teaching Through Trade Books

Editor's Note

This paper discusses two teachers’ experiences implementing a phenomenon and problem-driven curriculum for the first time in two kindergarten classes. It describes how teachers shifted their teaching to support students’ collaborative sensemaking about phenomenon. It also discusses how the teachers helped students overcome anxiety about uncertainty when figuring out phenomenon and during an engineering design challenge. Throughout the paper teachers offer detailed descriptions of the adjustments they made to their instructional methods and how those changes in pedagogy impacted students during the curriculum. Impacts to students’ overall sense of academic agency are also discussed. Finally, the paper addresses real-world concerns facing teachers transitioning to phenomenon and problem-driven instruction, including the amount of class time allocated to science learning and the amount of content required by the Next Generation Science Standards.

This article discusses strategies for teachers to find and use local phenomena in designed science units. The Next Generation Science Standards promote grounding learning in observable phenomena that students investigate using science practices. However, phenomena in designed curricula may not necessarily connect to students’ lived experiences. The article outlines an approach called phenomena adaptation—adding or swapping in phenomena proximal to students’ worlds. First, teachers deeply explore their lens of place to generate related phenomena. Second, a preassessment elicits students’ experiences of local, meaningful places, which are refined into observable phenomena. Third, teachers build a library of potential phenomena using a Related Phenomenon Chart to continually gather students’ related observations. Equipped with this collection, teachers select phenomena that can be productively explained by the science ideas in the designed curriculum materials. Adaptations involve adding phenomena through discussions or transfer tasks, or swapping designed phenomena to situate learning in place. Phenomena adaptation leverages high-quality designed materials while providing culturally sustaining opportunities for students to engage in meaningful scientific investigations connected to their lives and communities.