Dear Guardian,
Your student’s science teacher is introducing a new high quality instructional material (HQIM) called OpenSciEd. Many years of research have contributed to the creation of OpenSciEd, and the work has been approved nationally, and in Massachusetts, as a high quality curriculum for our students in grade 6-8.
OpenSciEd is designed to increase accessibility for all students. The units included in OpenSciEd use a storyline approach, giving students a science experience grounded in a student’s own questions to phenomena they may not fully understand. Storylines are sequenced lessons that encourage students to answer their own questions to figure out a piece of a science idea. Those science ideas are built into the program as observable events, which in science we refer to as ‘phenomena’. Students use science talk to make sense of their own thinking, deepening their reasoning through feedback and data. Both teachers and students have a responsibility within OpenSciEd to work together to figure things out as a community of learners, just as scientists do in the real world.
Your student will learn about specific topics in depth this year through OpenSciEd. Your student will also be expected to use science and engineering practices to make sense of these topics. The topics that will be taught through OpenSciEd this year are:
Grade 6: Why do we sometimes see different things when looking at the same object?
How can sound make something move?
Grade 7: Why do things sometimes get damaged when they hit each other?
How can containers keep stuff from warming up or cooling down?
Grade 8: How can we make something new that wasn’t there before?
How can we use chemical reactions to design a solution to a problem?
These phenomena have been carefully selected to anchor the storylines and motivate our students to want to learn more about the world around them. We hope that you see your students’ excitement for science at home, just as we do at school. If you have any questions, please contact your student’s science teacher or building administrator.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Warren, M.Ed²
STEAM Coordinator
Framingham Public Schools
Helping your child make sense of their learning:
Ask your student what question(s) they are working on currently, and how the class has made progress so far.
If your student sees the phenomenon or a similar phenomenon outside of school, encourage your student to explain to you what they think is happening.
There is no pre-teaching of vocabulary because words often have multiple meanings, and are often easier to remember once students have some experience with it. Therefore, ask your student to recall evidence or experiences to help elaborate on what their ideas and explanations are.
Encourage your student to connect how their models or drawings help explain their ideas about the current phenomenon being studied.
Ask your student how different structures or parts interact with other structures within their models.
Having conversations about science:
Encourage your student’s curiosity through talking about their own noticings and wonderings.
Hold off on providing answers right away for your child; we want students to make progress on their own (and others) questions and to think of ways to make sense of what is around them.
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