The Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP) presents its free middle school science curriculum as “units” on a Teacher Dashboard. Each of the 24 units has lesson plans, interactive media, downloadable documents, and projectable visuals.
“Scientific Thinking” is the first of five general themes, and it consists of six units: Observations and Inference, Models in Science, Claims and Evidence, Designing a Fair Test, Exploring an Hypothesis, and Investigating a Question.
As illustrated by the overview panels for two of these units below, a unit is designed for one to two class periods and contains a set of activities for students. These range from interactive readings and class discussions to simple laboratory exercises. Importantly, brief “teacher tune ups” are integrated throughout, and each activity can easily be selected or omitted by the teacher.
Click here to examine the interactive lesson “Going from Observations to Inferences” on the SERP website.
Click on the image below to access the entire SERP Science Dashboard:
