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I find it convenient to teach by standards when teaching a new subject. This allows me to breakdown concepts for students into simpler contents and refer to the text book when necessary. From the skipacks, I am learning good concepts which makes physic overlap with chemistry but I'm not sure how it would work for 9th grade students. How have you laid out your physical science curriculum? Has anyone taught using overlapping methods rather than going by standard to standard??

Hi Euvelyn, In the school where I teach, we have curriculum maps uploaded to our internal email system (Lotus Notes) Teachers over the years have added their maps with associated benchmarks and resources. Another thing I find useful is that our state standard site has benchmark maps and provides very specific details about what the students should be able to learn(major understandings). Here is a link to our website in case you want to check it out. http://standardstoolkit.k12.hi.us/index.html It seems like I do overlap some of the benchmarks by way of scaffolding. One benchmark leads to another, and the "old material"(from previous benchmark) must often be revisited to when learning the new benchmark. I have also found that the scientific inquiry benchmarks can always be blended with the other content ones. I hope some of this helps! Aloha, Nicole

Thanks Nicole. I will be able to use your post information.

Typically I do not use a text book for lessons, but I do use them for sequencing. Good text books have a scope and sequence that is laid out in the order that is appropriate for learning. So by simply flipping through a few text books one can get a general sense for th order of things and a pacing guide can develope by cross referencing with the content standards. Jason

I'm finding PBL (problem based learning)as a good reinforcement for understanding. Whenever we move to a new section, it would be some sort of workshop that would assist students in their final product. At the same time, students would be accountable to remember what they learned in the previous sections since they compile all the knowledge they gained into the final product.