Customize
Curricular Customization Model for Equitable Sensemaking
The equity-centered curricular customization model supports teachers as they engage in the work of adapting science curriculum for their classrooms. The customization process weaves together three essential priorities: anchoring curricular adaptation in an equity goal, being responsive to the context of curriculum enactment, and supporting teachers’ curricular sensemaking.
Customizing with an Equity Goal
Customizing materials through the lens of an equity goal involves being responsive to student needs to support more equitable learning environments. It seeks to center students, expand their sensemaking, and guide teachers as they engage in the process. While many equity goals are possible, the resources on this page offer teaching strategies and professional learning resources centered on three example equity goals.
Emerging Multilingual Learners
Incorporating multiple ways of communication in science lessons can help expand student participation and ownership of their own learning. It is meant to highlight the different ways individuals make meaning beyond the use of written and spoken language, emphasizing how we might use drawings, images, gestures, or other multimodal ways of engaging in science. This allows teachers to support EMLs' sensemaking in the science classroom.
Teaching Strategies and Tools
The strategy sheet for EML includes examples, moves, and activities that teachers can incorporate in their classrooms, such as the use of gestures or strategic grouping.​
​
Vignettes are Illustrative cases on how the strategies have been used in practice by teachers in classrooms.​
​​
Teachers use student surveys to collect data from their classes to refine their equity goal and inform their customizations.
​
Professional Learning Resources
We developed resources for a PLC that included 8 sessions. Each session was 2 hours and included agendas, activities, and other resources to support teachers in this work.
​​
We have conducted a variety of hour-long workshops to introduce teachers and other practitioners to the resources for this equity goal.
Video cases are embedded in PL materials. For example, session 5 of the PLC includes a video case illustrating how a teacher incorporated the use of gestures in their classroom.
​
Voices and Perspectives
Many students struggle to see the value of their ideas within the science classroom. As a result, many great ideas and voices often go unheard, and these students fail to gain ownership or develop a sense of belonging within the science community. By encouraging student voice and perspective, teachers can create an environment where more students can share and build on each other's ideas in productive ways, further enhancing their science learning.
Teaching Strategies and Tools
The strategy sheet for encouraging more student voice and perspective includes examples, moves, and activities that teachers can incorporate in their classrooms, such as critiquing each other's ideas or citing other students. ​
​
Vignettes are Illustrative cases on how the strategies have been used in practice by teachers in classrooms.​
​​
Teachers use student surveys to collect data from their classes to refine their equity goal and inform their customizations.
​
Professional Learning Resources
We developed resources for a PLC that included 8 sessions. Each session was 2 hours and included agendas, activities, and other resources to support teachers in this work.
​​
We have conducted a variety of hour-long workshops to introduce teachers and other practitioners to the resources for this equity goal.
​
Video cases are embedded in PL materials. For example, session 5 of the PLC includes a video case illustrating how a teacher incorporated the use of expert groups in their classroom.
Relevance
When students don’t see connections between their science classrooms and their everyday experiences, they may not be interested in learning. That’s why grounding science teaching in compelling, real-world phenomena is vital. Even with strong anchoring phenomena, however, students may lose interest over the course of a unit. They may not see the connections that a teacher sees. Customizing curricula to enhance relevance can foster deeper and more sustained engagement in science learning.
Teaching Strategies and Tools
The strategy sheet for enhancing relevance offers examples, moves, and activities teachers can use to connect learning to students’ lives.
​
Teachers use student surveys to collect data from their classes to refine their equity goal and inform their customizations.
​
The relevance planning tool can be used by teachers to identify places in the curriculum where learning can connect more deeply to students’ lives and plan customizations to support relevance.
Professional Learning Resources
We developed resources for a PLC that included 6 sessions. Each session was 2 hours and included slides, activities, and other resources to support teachers in this work.
We have conducted a variety of hour-long workshops to introduce teachers and other practitioners to the resources for this equity goal.
​
Video cases are embedded in PL materials. For example, this workshop presentation includes a video case illustrating how a teacher adapted an investigation to allow for student exploration of a related phenomenon of their choice.