How to Pair OpenSciEd’s On-Demand Teacher Support Library with the Activate Learning Digital Platform
How to Pair OpenSciEd’s On-Demand Teacher Support Library with the Activate Learning Digital Platform
Teaching OpenSciEd is an exciting opportunity to bring student-driven, phenomenon-based learning to life, but it also takes thoughtful planning, strong routines, and the right tools at your fingertips. Luckily, educators don’t have to tackle that alone.
OpenSciEd offers an excellent On-Demand Teacher Support Library, filled with videos, explanations of strategies, teacher experiences, and unit-level guidance to help teachers deepen their practice. And on the curriculum side, the Activate Learning Digital Platform provides a streamlined, classroom-ready experience that supports intuitive use and efficient classroom implementation of OpenSciEd units.
Together, these two resources create a powerful combination:
OpenSciEd helps teachers understand the “why” and “how,” and the Activate Learning Digital Platform helps educators implement them both.
In this post, we’ll walk through how both sets of tools support your teaching journey and how using them together can boost confidence, save time, and help students engage more deeply with science.
How to Access the Teacher Support Library
To make planning even easier, the Activate Learning Digital Platform links directly to each OpenSciEd On-Demand Teacher Support Library resource. See how to access both below.
Helpful Resources, Every Step of the Way
Unit-Specific Resources
OpenSciEd’s On-Demand Teacher Support Library helps teachers refine their instructional approach and better understand the intent behind each unit. The library includes unit-specific resources that empower teachers to feel ready for each upcoming unit. Using both video and e-learning media formats, these units cover topics such as lesson planning, how to get started, absent students, and even in-depth unit webinars.
To further support teachers as they prep for a new unit, the Activate Learning Digital Platform includes helpful unit-specific information located within the Teacher Portal for each unit. The Teacher Portal provides a variety of assets, including PDF books, printable classroom posters, material charts, unit storyline overviews, home communication letters, and direct links to OpenSciEd’s On-Demand Teacher Support Library.
Planning and Preparation
Start a new unit strong with preparation, organization, and clear goals by utilizing the Planning and Preparation resources on the OpenSciEd On-Demand Teacher Support Library. Each classroom is different, but this OpenSciEd catalogue of videos and articles offers insights into how best to plan instruction, implementation, and materials management for every classroom.
Another unique resource included in the Planning and Preparation library is the series of "Classroom Spotlight” videos. These 6-7-minute videos feature real OpenSciEd teachers as they walk viewers through a tour of their classrooms. Get ready-to-use ideas and strategies for utilizing classroom space, managing resources, and routine tips at the click of a button!
Planning, preparation, and organization continue in both the Activate Learning Digital Platform Teacher Portal and the Plan section. In the Teacher Portal, teachers will discover Unit Resources and Teaching the Lessons Resources, both organized into easy-to-use lists. Unit Resources include foundational information, universal resources, and unit-specific documents. Teaching the Lesson Resources support teachers and students with day-to-day needs such as printable handouts, slide decks, student readers, audio recordings, student videos, and more.
The Plan section of the Activate Learning Digital Platform provides teachers with robust features like OpenSciEd Lesson Overviews, Lesson Setup, Learning Plans, and a unique resource known as “Where We Are Going and NOT Going”.
Instructional Strategies, Pedagogy, and Implementation Tools
“By design, OpenSciEd incorporates routines into everyday instruction to help teachers and students advance through a unit storyline. The instructional model relies on five routines, each playing a specific role in moving the storyline forward and providing supports to help students achieve the objectives of each activity.” (OpenSciEd Middle School Program Overview, page 3). Lay the groundwork for these activities, and maintain them, with help from the Daily Teaching Moves resources in the OpenSciEd On-Demand Teacher Support Library. Dive into videos and articles that provide expertise on facilitating student discussions, setting agreements/norms, modeling strategies, pacing advice, supporting absent students, and much more.
The Activate Learning Digital Platform doesn’t end at helping teachers prepare for each unit of the OpenSciEd science curriculum. Both the Teacher Edition and Student Edition seamlessly incorporate instruction, routines, discussion, and assessment right into the published content. Students can create notice-and-wondering charts, develop diagrams, and record their notes in their Digital Notebook. The Student Edition also integrates prompts and clear instructions for turn and talk, initial explanations, notice and wonderings, and comparing diagrams.
Step-by-step instructions, centralized resources, and connections with most Learning Management Systems (LMS) are especially useful in supporting absent students and learners who wish to review the lessons further.
Emerging Multilingual Learners Support
The OpenSciEd On-Demand Teacher Support Library also includes Teaching Resources focused on multilingual learning. Accessing the linked Multilingual Learning and OpenSciEd resources page provides information and resources to enhance and support the OpenSciEd curriculum for every emerging multilingual learner (EML). These assets include handouts, teacher experiences, student materials, and a webinar on the subject.
The Activate Learning Digital Platform prioritizes making content more attainable for students through customizable web accessibility tools, a dictionary with read-aloud definitions, and support for writing, visualizing, and modeling. The Student Edition also offers extensive translation options, such as embedded text translation to over 130 languages, text-to-speech with read-along highlighting in 39 languages, and translated print materials (Spanish only). The Teacher Edition also provides translated slides and handouts. (Spanish only)
Final Thoughts
OpenSciEd’s On-Demand Teacher Support Library and the Activate Learning Digital Platform share this goal: to support teachers in creating meaningful, student-centered science learning experiences.
OpenSciEd grounds instruction in a clear pedagogical foundation that supports three-dimensional science learning. The Activate Learning Digital Platform is designed to work alongside OpenSciEd materials, offering a digital environment that supports teachers as they plan and teach. Together, they give teachers the clarity, structure, and confidence they need to bring 3D science learning to life. If you’d like to explore the Activate Learning Digital Platform or get started with OpenSciEd, our team is always here to support you.
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