California has identified two course models for the Next Generation Science Standards in grades 6-8, the Preferred Integrated Course Model and the Alternative Discipline Specific Model. Hacienda La Puente USD, through the NGSS Curriculum Committee, decided on the Preferred Integrated Course Model for students.
Publisher: Discovery Education
Unit 1: Systems on Earth
Unit 2: Causes of Weather
Unit 3: Causes and Effects of Regional Climates
Unit 4: Our Changing Climate
Unit 1: Matter All Around
Unit 2: Matter Cycles and Energy Flow
Unit 3: Shaping Earth's Resources and Ecosystems
Unit 4: Sustaining Ecosystems
Unit 1: Objects Move and Collide
Unit 2: Moving Planets
Unit 3: Life's Unity and Diversity
Unit 4: Monitoring Biodiversity
A storyline is a coherent sequence of lessons, in which each step is driven by students' questions that arise from their interactions with phenomena. A student's goal should always be to explain a phenomenon or solve a problem. At each step, students make progress on the classroom's questions through science and engineering practices, to figure out a piece of a science idea. Each piece they figure out adds to the developing explanation, model, or designed solution. Each step may also generate questions that lead to the next step in the storyline. Together, what students figure out helps explain the unit's phenomena or solve the problems they have identified. A storyline provides a coherent path toward building disciplinary core idea and crosscutting concepts, piece by piece, anchored in students' own questions.