Coherence That Clicks: The Power of Storylines in OpenSciEd Elementary
Coherence That Clicks: The Power of Storylines in OpenSciEd Elementary
Quick Take: OpenSciEd Elementary is redefining science instruction with a storyline approach that keeps students curious, connected, and driving their own learning. From anchoring phenomena to coherent lesson progressions, OpenSciEd Elementary gives K-5 teachers a clear, purposeful path through science, no scrambling required.
In this post, we'll explore how OpenSciEd's storyline approach creates meaningful, coherent science experiences for students, including how anchoring phenomena spark curiosity, how each lesson type serves a specific purpose, and how this framework sets students up for success all the way through middle and high school.
Planning Science Instruction for the K-5 Classroom
Between planning for math, ELA and small group instruction, planning for science can feel overwhelming at times for K-5 educators. As a current fourth-grade teacher, I often find it difficult to plan high-quality science instruction when my brainspace is used for the aforementioned disciplines. During these moments of overwhelm, I used to find myself scrambling to find science activities that go with the theme we are covering. Fortunately, OpenSciEd has taken the time to ensure that the Elementary units provide science instruction that is meaningful to students while also streamlining planning.
Preparing Students for What's Next
OpenSciEd Elementary provides a comprehensive approach to science instruction, offering robust instructional materials that build a deep understanding of science content. To top it off, OpenSciEd Elementary prepares students for OpenSciEd Middle School and ensures a smooth transition to both OpenSciEd Middle and OpenSciEd High School. So, fifth-grade teachers, you can rest assured that your students will enter middle school as strong young scientists who are familiar with OpenSciEd classroom instructional lessons and have a deep understanding of science content. You can say goodbye to searching for a science activity on your prep and hello to perusing artfully crafted OpenSciEd Elementary instructional materials.
The Storyline Approach
How does OpenSciEd ensure a deep understanding of science content? OpenSciEd instructional materials integrate a storyline approach.
According to Reiser, Novak & McGill (2017) as cited in the Draft K-5 Teacher Handbook (2024),
“the goal of a science storyline approach is to provide students with a meaningful experience that is motivated by the students’ own desires to explain something they don’t understand or to solve a problem their classroom has come to care about” (OpenSciEd Elementary Science Design Specifications, page 8)
Image: OpenSciEd Elementary Instructional Model
Anchoring Phenomena
To ensure that students are motivated, OpenSciEd is centered on real-world phenomena in every unit, at every grade level. This means students are engaged throughout the unit as they work to explain what is happening in the phenomena or related investigations. You might be wondering, why do they call it a storyline?
According to the K-5 Teacher Handbook (2024),
“we use the metaphor of a storyline to capture the fact that learners should be motivated to work through the next puzzle in their science investigations just as they are motivated to see what happens next in an unfolding story” (OpenSciEd Elementary Science Design Specifications, page 8)
That metaphor sure does give you the ‘ah ha’ moment, doesn’t it? I know it did for me!
Making Sense of Storylines
Digging a bit deeper into an OpenSciEd unit storyline, the K-5 Teacher Handbook explains it as, “...a logical sequence of lessons that are motivated by students’ questions. It is a science storyline because the questions arise from the students’ interactions with the phenomena” (p. 8). You can think of the anchoring phenomenon as a puzzle. As students work their way through the unit, they are learning about different pieces to the puzzle. By the time the unit concludes, students have constructed their understanding of the phenomena and thus completed the puzzle.
Great, so OpenSciEd provides real-world phenomena in its instructional materials- but I am sure you have provided high-interest experiments, demonstrations, or curricula before. So what’s the difference? The difference is coherence. OpenSciEd instructional materials ensure coherence from the student perspective through the storyline approach. The K-5 Teacher Handbook says, “as a step-wise process of questioning, investigating, and building understanding, a storyline provides a coherent path toward building a disciplinary core idea and crosscutting concepts, anchored in students’ own experiences and questions” (p. 8). This means students understand why they are engaging in a science activity or lesson and how it fits into the bigger picture of trying to figure out the anchoring phenomenon.
Lesson Types and Components
The curriculum maintains coherence by incorporating navigation throughout the storyline. OpenSciEd Elementary instructional materials utilize lesson types. In Elementary OpenSciEd has three different types of lessons: Anchoring Phenomenon Lessons, Investigation Lessons, and Putting the Pieces Together Lessons. Lessons may include up to four different components: Navigation, Explore, Synthesize, and Community Connections. These lessons and components also help elicit student questions, encourage the development of a positive classroom community, and ensure efficiency within the classroom.
Each lesson type serves a specific purpose within the unit storyline. The first lesson that students will participate in is the Anchoring Phenomenon lesson. This lesson serves as a shared experience for all students that provides a basis to build a positive science community (OpenSciEd Elementary Design Specifications, 2022, p. 105). Additionally, the Anchoring Phenomenon lesson allows for student background knowledge and questions to be elicited (OpenSciEd Elementary Design Specifications, 2022, p. 105). You can think of this as the unit launch that engages students in wanting to learn more, to share what they notice and wonder. As I mentioned earlier, the anchoring phenomenon drives the learning for the unit.
Image: Anchoring Phenomenon slide from OpenSciEd Elementary 1.1 on the Activate Learning Digital Platform
Another kind of lesson students will engage with is Navigation. This takes place between transition points, like between the lessons (OpenSciEd Elementary Design Specifications, 2022). You may be familiar with ELA or math curricula that use language like “yesterday we learned about… and today I want to teach you…” The navigation lesson is similar to this in that it allows students to make connections between lessons and activities; however, OpenSciEd leaves the figuring out to the students and thus the learning up to students! OpenSciEd Design Specifications states, “the routine is central in enabling students to experience the unit as a coherent storyline in which each activity has a purpose and is connected to what has gone before and what is coming” (p. 106).
Image: Navigate slide from OpenSciEd Elementary 1.2 on the Activate Learning Digital Platform
During the Investigation lesson, students ask questions about the phenomenon so they can design and carry out investigations and engage in science and engineering practices (OpenSciEd Design Specifications, 2022, p. 107). These age-appropriate science investigations meet your students at their grade level. Teacher materials provide teacher support as they prepare to help students with their investigations.
Image: Navigate slide from OpenSciEd Elementary 1.2 on the Activate Learning Digital Platform
Another classroom lesson is Putting the Pieces Together. This is the time when students gather information they have learned up to a certain part of the unit (often at the end of a Lesson Set), and begin organizing it in a meaningful way to try to explain the anchoring phenomenon. This can also happen across lessons as students begin making sense of the evidence they are collecting and allows them to think about what they still need to learn and understand. This often takes the form of a shared artifact, such as a consensus model or an individual model.
Image: Synthesize slide from OpenSciEd Elementary 1.8 on the Activate Learning Digital Platform
Remember how I said OpenSciEd Elementary allows for a smooth transition to OpenSciEd Middle and High School? This progression works seamlessly across the gradebands as students K-12 engage in investigations, conversations, Scientists Circles, and sensemaking. This engagement allows them to be ready to plan more sophisticated investigations and learn more complex content, as they don’t have the cognitive load of learning a whole new set of classroom lesson types and sensemaking activities. That’s a win for middle school teachers!
This broad overview of each classroom lesson type sheds some light on their purpose; however, a district adopting OpenSciEd may benefit from Activate Learning Professional Learning. Professional learning sessions provide an opportunity for teachers and administrators to deepen their understanding of the storyline approach, classroom lessons, and the 3-dimensional pedagogical approach to ensure successful implementation of OpenSciEd instructional materials.
In the next two blog posts, we will look closely at a typical OpenSciEd Elementary lesson structure and how OpenSciEd Elementary incorporates assessments into its instructional materials.
About the Author: Jacquelyn Tindall
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