Curriculum Components
Google Tools
Because of the flexibility of the open source Google Apps for Education platform, we host most of our materials in Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets. We encourage teachers to make copies and adapt documents for their students’ needs and the contexts in which they teach. For additional help on how to make a copy of a Google Doc, please watch this video.
Course Maps
The course maps are the “homepage” for the Living Environment and Earth Science courses. The maps are intended to support teachers in planning a spiral curriculum and understanding the course as a whole.
Spiral Curriculum
The New Visions Science Curriculum strategically spirals core concepts (such as evolution) and themes (such as energy transfer) to facilitate multiple opportunities for students to interact with the overarching themes of biology and earth science, and to promote success on the Regents exam.
Unit plan
Unit plans are designed using the “backwards planning” approach described in Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe (2005).
In the BSCS 5E Instructional Model, teachers guide students through a series of learning phases: engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and evaluation. The exploration phase acts as the anchor for learning, focusing on authentic experiences that allow students to engage in science and observe phenomena before developing formal explanations.
Performance task
Each unit culminates in a Regents-like assessment (made up of items from prior Regents exams) as well as a Performance Task that requires application of the learning in the unit to a real-world problem.