With the release of the current College and Career Ready Science Standards by the state, it became clear that science instruction was going to have to evolve. Unfortunately, high quality instructional materials through publishing companies are still difficult to find or very expensive to purchase. ESU 5 is helping to solve that problem for districts through the vetting of high quality units that will function and flow as a full K-12 curriculum. These units have been developed and tested with students by leading national science institutions, such as: ACHIEVE and Open Sci Ed. ESU 5 schools will have access to this curriculum and the equipment necessary to implement it for FREE through the science program. Benefits to this:
- Assured of HIGH QUALITY, aligned units that meet our standards for FREE
- Training and support on the implementation will be available to schools for FREE through ESU 5
- Non-consumable equipment/materials to implement this curriculum will be provided by a checkout system through ESU 5 for FREE
- The ability to work together as a region to promote high quality science instruction and build resources around these units is HUGE
- Material production around the materials - student work examples and exemplars, administration walk through forms, parent guides, pacing guides and etc will be coming soon
- Savings of tens of thousands of district dollars for curriculum purchases is HUGE
Obstacles for us:
- We do not yet have a full year of curriculum - we will have to continue to collect units over the next 1-2 years - but it will come. Research is showing implementation of a couple units at a time is more successful anyway.
- Scheduling in districts - this material will require daily science classes (30 minutes in primary and 45 in upper elementary) - not all teachers have that at this time.