EdReports 2024 Badge with three green bars

All Green, All Gateways

Issues and Science brings middle school science to life by centering each unit around a real-world problem and encouraging students to explore concepts through hands-on labs and investigations. This curriculum fosters curiosity and creativity, enabling students to make meaningful connections with their learning, peers, and the world. 

EdReports found Issues and Science to fully meet expectations for standards alignment and usability in Gateways 1-3. Read the full report. 

Students react to IRL erosion happing in their mini stream table

Three-Dimensional

EdReports states that Issues and Science:

  • is "designed to integrate three dimensions into student learning opportunities"
  • "consistently supports meaningful student sensemaking with the three dimensions"
  • is "designed to elicit direct, observable evidence for three-dimensional learning by providing three-dimensional learning objectives at the activity level and building towards the performance expectations of the larger unit" (Criterion 1a-c)

Embedded Practices

Science practices are authentically embedded in Issues and Science from day one so there is no need to teach skills and practices separately and out of context. Students typically spend more than two-thirds of their instructional days doing screen-free labs and investigations. 

Instructional Design

Units have more than 15 different activity types to keep students engaged and motivated. Students directly interact within phenomena instead of reading, clicking through a simulation, or watching a video.

Issue-Oriented

Understanding the science behind today's issues can 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.

Student wearing goggles writes in a notebook in science classroom

Issues and Science lowers the linguistic burden for students by providing content through a variety of instruction. Robust tools within the core instruction further support literacy skills.

  • Student materials are available in print and interactive-digital in English and Spanish, with read-aloud translations for 26 additional languages. 
  • More than 20 types of literacy tools are embedded at the point for use with further instructional support for teachers. 
  • Core instruction combines with these strategies to help students improve their literacy skills over time. 
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Assessment

Issues and Science is designed to elicit direct, observable evidence of three-dimensional learning and performance expectations (PEs). Materials consistently provide learning objectives at the activity level that build toward the PEs for the larger unit. To allow for flexibility in the teaching sequence, student tasks often remain at the same level of complexity, while the assessment system provides scoring guides that can be used to track students’ progress and serve as evidence of increasing competency of student work.

Analysis Questions

Near the end of each activity, an Analysis section provides questions to assess student understanding of the activity’s guiding question. Analysis questions typically build in complexity, starting with one-dimensional questions and build to three-dimensional questions, assessing how students incorporate the three dimensions to demonstrate learning.

Teacher Support

To facilitate use of the assessment system, teacher resources provide sample answers and exemplars, three-dimensional color coding, suggested methods for quick formative assessment, unit assessment blueprints to locate assessment for specific PEs, and guidance to aid instructional changes as a result of assessment data.

Connected Assessment

The SEPUP Assessment System is embedded into the activities so students have regular opportunities to demonstrate learning and receive authentic feedback in the context of their work at hand. A group redesigning a structure to prevent erosion, for example, may also be evaluated on their understanding of engineering design.