Complete unit guides for elementary and high school science — what each strand covers, what students reliably get wrong, and the order that works.
Sixteen guides, one per grade or subject area. Each walks the NGSS strands it covers, names the misconceptions that actually derail those units, and argues for a teaching sequence. They are written from a college science instructor’s side of the problem — which misunderstandings survive twelve years of schooling and arrive in a freshman lecture hall intact.
If you are equipping a room rather than planning a unit, the classroom equipment guide covers the hardware side. If you want the thinking behind the materials, that is what the professional development courses are for.
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1st Grade Science: Sound, Light & Living Things — Complete Unit Guide
Sound, light, living things and the sky — first grade science, and the four places six-year-olds reliably get stuck. First grade is where children are asked to explain something they cannot see.…
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2nd Grade Science: Matter, Weather & Engineering Design — Complete Unit Guide
Materials, weather, land and the engineering design process — second grade science, and why the design standard is the one most often taught wrong. Second grade is the year science gets hands-on…
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3rd Grade Science: Forces, Ecosystems & Earth Systems — Complete Unit Guide
Everything third grade science covers, in the order it actually makes sense to teach it — forces, traits, ecosystems and weather. Third grade is the year science stops being “look at this…
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4th Grade Science: Energy, Waves & Earth’s Systems — Complete Unit Guide
Energy, waves, structures and Earth’s changing surface — fourth grade science, and the year the word “energy” starts doing real work. Fourth grade is where energy stops being a synonym for enthusiasm…
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5th Grade Science: Matter, Space & Earth Systems — Complete Unit Guide
Particles, conservation of matter, Earth’s systems and the night sky — fifth grade science, and the year one question separates the students who understand it from the ones who don’t. Fifth grade…
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High School Biology: Cells & Human Body Systems — Complete Unit Guide
Cells, energy, division and homeostasis — taught in the order that makes the causal chain visible instead of the order the textbook prints them in. High school biology is where students first…
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High School Biology: Ecology & Ecosystems — Complete Unit Guide
Energy flow, matter cycling, population dynamics and ecosystem stability — built on the one distinction most students never make. Ecology looks like the easy unit. The vocabulary is familiar, the diagrams are…
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High School Biology: Evolution & Natural Selection — Complete Unit Guide
Common ancestry, selection and speciation — and how to stop “the species adapted because it needed to” before it hardens into something you cannot remove. Evolution is the unit where the most…
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High School Biology: Genetics & Heredity — Complete Unit Guide
Inheritance, variation and the statistics underneath both — and why the Punnett square is the most over-taught tool in high school biology. Genetics is the unit where students are most likely to…
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High School Chemistry: Matter & Chemical Reactions — Complete Unit Guide
Periodic trends, bonding, reaction rates and stoichiometry — and the one energy claim that most students get exactly backwards. High school chemistry has a reputation as the maths-heavy science, and that reputation…
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High School Earth Science: Human Impact, Sustainability & Engineering Solutions — Complete Unit Guide
Resources, hazards, climate models and engineering design — the unit where students have the strongest opinions and the weakest criteria. Human impact is the unit most likely to become a debate and…
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High School Earth Science: Solar System & Geologic Time — Complete Unit Guide
The sun, the origin of the elements, orbital motion and deep time — and why “the Big Bang was an explosion” is the sentence to stop saying. This is the unit where…
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High School Earth Science: Weather, Climate & Plate Tectonics — Complete Unit Guide
Plate tectonics, convection, the water and carbon cycles, and climate — the unit where every idea turns out to be the same idea. Earth’s systems look like four separate topics and are…
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High School Physics: Energy Transfer & Conservation — Complete Unit Guide
Energy transfer, conservation and the second law — and how to teach “energy is never lost” to students who can see perfectly well that the ball stopped bouncing. Conservation of energy is…
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High School Physics: Forces & Motion — Complete Unit Guide
Newton’s laws, momentum and collision design — and the 2,000-year-old intuition that every physics class has to dismantle first. Every student walks into physics believing that motion requires a continuous force. It…
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High School Physics: Waves & the Electromagnetic Spectrum — Complete Unit Guide
Wave properties, the electromagnetic spectrum, and digital information — plus why the microscope you were sold on magnification probably cannot show what you bought it for. Waves are where physics stops being…
Editable, standards-aligned worksheets and unit bundles for every grade above are in the Teachers Pay Teachers store.