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So first, some background on me and my school.  I am in my 3rd year teaching and I have 7 and 8 together.  I work at an alternative school and our population is very transient.  Students come and go constantly and come to us with huge deficiencies.  It is not uncommon for students to say they never passed a single class until they came to us.  Our population is 95% free and reduced lunch with 100% qualifying for Title 1 services. We have a no homework policy and a reduced school year (150 days instead of 180). I use the NGSS.   When I first started at my school my director wanted me to try teaching half the 7/8 standards one year and half the next, so after two years they get all of them.  This hasn't worked because if a kid is only with us in 7 or 8 and not both years they could very well miss a huge chunk of standards.  The more I think about it, the more I believe I need to treat my room as a true 7/8 split and teach 2 curriculums.  I need help.   I love the SEEDstorylines out of Utah www.seedstorylines.org and would like to follow their method and lessons, but I am not sure how to do this.  The problem is that the lessons all require the teacher to serve as a facilitator to inquiry, and with my students being pretty high needs due to deficiencies across the board, independent work is near impossible at the start of the year unless it is very basic, rudimentary work that doesn't require critical thinking skills.  We work on building that throughout the year.   I considered a type of flipped format where the flip all happens in school - independant one day, teacher directed the next and the grades would have opposite types of days.  I just don't know how to do this.  I should mention I also teach HS physical science, biology, and earth science.  This means I have a min of 4 preps a day (5 if I move to teaching 7/8 as two separate curriculums) and I do not have a prep period.  I also teach an advisory/study period as well as an online learning lab, but neither of those require planning.  Again, assigning homework is not an option.  Anyone have some advice?

Wow! You really have a challenging teaching assignment. Alternative settings are tough, but can be extremely rewarding. I applaud you for reaching out and using the NSTA Learning Center. There are so many resources here that will support you as you encourage and teach your students science. Remember that your students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. I can see how much you care by your post and that alone will make positive changes in your students. The students who return to my traditional classroom setting never seem to have mastered the standards (I feel that they learn process skills and school skills through the content in their alternative setting), but a good teacher in that setting has prepared them to be successful in my class by teaching them how to learn, use scientific process skills and complete the products required. That might be what your principal was trying to communicate when he said to teach half of the 7th and 8th grade standards each year. Might you consider looping the standards through 3 major units each year, Earth Science, Life Science, and Physical Science? I start each unit with a K-W-L chart that becomes their unit journal (sections for what students should know, what they want to learn and what they learned... sometimes I add an H section for how they will learn (inquiry, research etc.). Can you teach your students about learning communities and help them to teach one another? (scary thought?? It does empower!) Can they use and share resources to fill in their K-W-L and find video clips and images to answers questions that they have posed and find important? (this will all have to be modeled of course... they can't "do" school yet because no one has taught them!) I also like an activity called "Iron Science". I gather groups of material for each of the science disciplines, Earth Science, Space Science and Physical Science and ask students to develop a scientific question (How does the I.V. affect the D.V.) using all or some of the materials. These materials can be directly related to standards and a jumping off point for a unit. In addition to the SEEDstorylines, please take a look at the 5E Instructional Model. I like to use the Formative Assessment Probes in "Uncovering Student Ideas in Science" by Page Keeley, Francis Eberle and Lynn Farrin to Engage students and think they might work well in your setting. Good luck! Hope this helps! I'm attaching my Nature of Science Power Point for your consideration!

Attachments

Nature_of_Science.pptx (0.15 Mb)