I’m always on the lookout for high-quality FREE science units that are specifically designed to address the instructional shifts in the NGSS. I thought I would share a unit called Community Waters that I’ve been using for a couple of years in my science methods courses. I like to use these kinds of units as objects of study for my teacher education students and also for in service teachers who want to see models of “what it looks like”. I can remember 10 years ago (before any of these things existed) and how challenging it was to help teachers see the shifts without having solid examples. I recall an elementary teacher in 2014 during an NGSS overview workshop saying that we shouldn’t have new standards if we don’t have curriculum to support them. She probably wasn’t wrong. I can remember describing to her how I thought of it all as a process and that the NGSS were designed to disrupt the system and that it would take time for folks to design lessons and units that met the new criteria. So it’s exciting to now have several examples like this.

Some of the features of the Community Waters unit that I appreciate:

• Students getting outside to engage in science and engineering
• Explicit learning about engineering design
• Students developing and considering solutions to community-based problems
• 3Dimensional phenomenon-based learning opportunities
• Intentional opportunities for students to talk and think together

Click HERE to see an overview of the Community Waters science unit designed by Islandwood and other partners. Click HERE to see a version of the curriculum used by Seattle Public Schools.

Below are a couple of short videos where you can see students engaged in parts of the Community Waters learning experiences.

• What do you notice the students doing and saying?
• What do you notice the teacher doing and saying?