- SEPUP MIddle School Designed for the NGSS
- How Lab-Aids Supports Arizona MS Curriculum
- High School Core Curriculum
- Supplementals Kits & Modules
Get to know Lab-Aids and SEPUP
Lab-Aids is the exclusive publisher for SEPUP, an acronym for Science Education for Public Understanding Program, located at the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Lab-Aids partners with SEPUP to publish digital and print materials and produce science lab equipment.
SEPUP requires students to interact with scientific content multiple times through varied learning experiences including investigations, laboratories, readings, and simulations. Literacy skills are embedded into the investigations and will support Arizona curriculum goals.
Students investigate real-world issues through engaging experiments and then make data-driven decisions.
Change the Equation recognizes SEPUP as one of the nation's most effective STEM learning programs. Click here for more details.
How are we culturally responsive?
Lab-Aids supports Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices.
- Foster Positive Learning Communities:
- 4-2-1 model supports heterogenous grouping, networking, and collaboration.
- Activates multiple intelligence through varied activities.
- Support materials are organized and easily accessed.
- Student Centered/ Relevant to Student's Lives: (see sample student pages)
- Students generate, investigate, and respond to questions relevant to their lives.
- Presented in a student-centered storyline, main characters are students and reflect the diversity of society.
- Engaging, Rigorous and Relevant:
- Challenges students to think critically and address relevant issues.
- Issues-based - student explorations build their expertise - they propose solutions supported by data.
- Their voice is respected and valued, encouraging divergent thinking supported by their evidence and reasoning.
Take a look inside
How can the exploration of issues in our world today, prepare our students for the decisions and solutions of tomorrow? Each unit in Issues and Science is framed with an overall focus to guide the learning and instruction. How should we prevent the spread of an infectious disease? How is a growing population affecting the availability of natural resources? These issues and their connected phenomena drive the storyline of each unit for students to investigate, discuss, analyze, and design solutions in Issues and Science, designed for NGSS middle school science.
Encouraging multiple perspectives from students
Issues-based science means we ask for their position, supported by data. SEPUP is built intentionally to encourage discussion and evidence-driven debate. Students gather data and then make decisions. Input is respected and valued as the researcher-expert.
Lab-Aids has prepared a number of correlation documents that demonstrate how our middle school programs are aligned with the Common Core ELA and Math and the NGSS.
SEPUP Assessment System
The SEPUP Assessment System is based on the idea that students benefit from regular opportunities to demonstrate learning through performance in the context of their work at hand:
- a group redesigning a structure to prevent erosion may also be evaluated on their understanding of engineering design
- feedback can be provided to strengthen a student's argument as she considers additional evidence about fossilized footprints and explains the patterns
Each unit includes a variety of assessments embedded within the instruction context to provide consistent, actionable information to the teacher, and students, with minimal impact on instructional time.
Science and Global Issues: Biology
Developed by SEPUP™ at the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley
Science and Global Issues: Biology (SGI: Biology), developed by SEPUP at the Lawrence Hall of Science, uses an issue-oriented approach to connect biology to students' lives and communities. Activities and investigations, tied to the unit issue and phenomena, require students consider apply scientific evidence and to analyze the trade-offs involved in personal and societal decisions.
Science and Sustainability
Developed by SEPUP™ at the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley
Help your students understand that science is not only a part of their everyday lives, but that the decisions they make play a role in their local communities. The Science and Sustainability (S&S) course uses themes and activities related to local and global sustainability to present key concepts from the life, earth, chemical, and physical sciences.
Supports the use of interdisciplinary bundles of NGSS Performance Expectations for instruction as well as support for Common Core ELA and Mathematics. Science and Sustainability is a truly integrated approach to understanding the complex environmental issues of today.
A Natural Approach to Chemistry
Developed by Dr. Hsu, Dr. Chaniotakis, et al
A Natural Approach to Chemistry gives students the opportunity to do chemistry, not just read about it. In this program students learn the science to understand how chemistry is relevant to their lives.
The developers saw an opportunity in chemistry curricula, with students using college books that were written at the wrong reading level for them, emphasizing problem-solving without spending enough time on conceptualizing the big picture of chemistry. They felt chemistry instruction needed examples in order to make connections with students, it must be experienced at an appropriate level, and it must be relevant to their lives. In the end the program aims to teach students by posing a question, showing them how to investigate and solve problems without giving them the answers.
EDC EARTH SCIENCE
Developed by Oceans of Data Institute & the Education Development Center (EDC)
Designed using A Framework for Science Education, EDC Earth Science involves students by challenging them with thought-provoking investigations and questions they hear in the news or at their family dining table. The course opens with an exciting excerpt from the novel Red Mars and mid-way through the year students prepare a news story and make predictions about what Earth will be like in the year 2100.
In the End-of-Year Challenge students apply the knowledge they have gained during this course to prepare an essay or presentation predicting what Earth will be like when its interior cools completely.
Where Lab-Aids® got its start
Lab-Aids started producing kits over 50 years ago in an effort to provide teachers with everything needed for thoughtful, hands-on activities to approach difficult concepts.
Kits are a cost-effective way to teach content that is hard, rife with misconceptions, or just boring. These hands-on labs will energize your classroom.
Remote Learning Supports
Hands-on@Home Material Sets
These individually packaged per-student material kits include one set of equipment for select, safe activities in each unit of Issues and Science, Third Edition: Redesigned for the NGSS. We've carefully chosen investigations and labs that can be done safely at home for students to complete independently, or with their classmate online during synchronous or small group instruction. Shipped to the school or district, materials are individually packaged and labeled for immediate distribution.
TEACHER RESOURCES
Online Portals for Students and Teachers
The online Portal for Issues and Science for Arizona is available for both Students and Teachers an includes interactive text. LABsent sheets and videos for absent students, and the ability to receive and submit homework. Access to the Teacher Edition and Teacher Resources also includes editable PowerPoints, literacy tools, visual aids, training videos, and an integrated online assessment system.
Portal Supports:
Professional Development
Science educators have come to trust Lab-Aids as a valuable resource for engaging and worth-while professional development.
Our trainings are like our programs; engaging, hands-on, and personally relevant. From our popular conference workshops and getting-started days to full year implementation and district level train-the-trainer programs we are here to support our schools - now and in the future.
It's how all PD should be.
Using a model similar to other large districts, we will create an intentional plan within Arizona districts to build internal leadership and long-term sustainability of the program.
Contact Us
Contact Betty Buehler to address any questions, should they arise.