Carolina Biological Supply Company is a
leading supplier of science teaching materials.
Headquartered in Burlington, North Carolina, it
serves customers worldwide, including teachers,
professors, homeschool educators, and professionals
in health- and science-related fields. Carolina’s
expert scientists and teachers have partnered with
OpenSciEd to reengineer lessons to provide ease
of use and enhanced support while maintaining the
standards for high-quality instruction. Carolina’s
Certified Versions of OpenSciEd units—kits with
digital, print, and hands-on materials—are available
for grades 6–8.
back to school 2023
In a middle school science classroom, students are investigating natural hazards.
Through text and video, they experience the phenomenon of a tsunami, wonder about how it forms and moves, and engineer design solutions and technologies that could reduce its damages.
In three-dimensional science classrooms like the middle school example, students develop criticalthinking and problem-solving skills as they engage in science and engineering practices to make sense of phenomena. But high-quality investigations such as the natural hazards unit (OpenSciEd, n.d.) create additional opportunities to revisit, reinforce, recover, and develop skills beyond “just doing science.” In this grade 6 unit:
• Students reinforce elementary school math concepts as they build scatter plots with large data sets and look for patterns and trends between multiple variables.
• They strengthen language arts skills as they gather, evaluate, and communicate information and write explanations for midpoint and summative assessments.
• For social-emotional learning, the unit supports empathy and emotional responses as students relate to natural hazards, empowering them to prepare for and respond during an event that may impact them and their community.
“By students engaging in phenomena—learning to ask questions and developing their own investigations—it intuitively and immediately helps with critical-thinking skills in a variety of subjects,” Cory Ort says. Ort is a veteran teacher with 25 years’ experience in science classrooms. As a national science consultant for Carolina Biological Supply Company and certified professional learning facilitator for OpenSciEd, he now supports science educators and school administrators across the United States in understanding three-dimensional science education.
There are multiple commonalities among science, math, and English language arts (see the Venn diagram, page 2). But when it comes to threedimensional science, Ort explains that real-world applications of reading and math embedded in students’ investigations provide relevance and value for learning these skills. This meaningful application offers an additional avenue to facilitate learning recovery for students whose skills suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows scores for grades 4 and 8 in both math and reading declined for most states compared to 2019. These 2022 test scores translate to students, on average, being about 15 to 24 weeks behind in math and nine weeks behind in reading compared to 2019 (Bryant et al. 2023).
“They’re not just missing content,” Ort says. “They’re missing those skills that come from applying information, that cognitive connection. Through inquiry-based investigations, students see why it is important that they know these skills moving forward.”
