Back to school 2018 is here! This document will outline the changes you need to be aware of to be successful with the 2018 version of Amplify Science.
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​ Improved teacher resources
​ New teacher resources
​ New NGSS lesson supports
​ New assessment supports
​ New student resources
​ Detailed changes to content by unit

Print Teacher’s Guides are now available for purchase for each unit, containing all of the information found in the digital Teacher’s Guide, including all unit overview documents, complete lesson guides, standards alignment, differentiation strategies, and more. Furthermore, teachers also have the option of downloading individual parts or the entire unit Teacher’s Guide as a PDF file.

 All unit overview documents (“Unit Guide”) are now easier to find and are located just below the list of chapters on each unit page. Materials have been grouped into two sections, “Planning for the Unit” and “Teacher References”, and can now be viewed directly on the curriculum website with no need to download each document (though the option to download a PDF is still available). A Printable Resources section has also been added along the right side of the page for easy download access to common print materials.

Some documents found in the Unit Guide have changed names or have been separated into two documents:

•   “Unit Map” and “Standards at a Glance” are now two separate sections

•   “Progress Builds” and “Assessment System” are now two separate sections 

•   “Managing the Unit” is now called “Getting Ready to Teach”

•   “On-the-Fly Assessments” is now called “Embedded Formative Assessments”

•   “Lesson Summaries” is now called “Lesson Overview Compilation” 

•   “On-the-Fly Assessments” is now called “Embedded Formative Assessments”

Many of the materials found in the Unit Guide have been revised. You can access the latest version by redownloading each PDF on its own or by downloading the entire unit’s Teacher’s Guide as a PDF file. 

We have improved the design of the lesson map so that students can more easily follow along while the teacher is projecting, even from the back of the room. 

Printable lesson guides feature a new, improved design and include the same content as the digital version, such as teacher supports, possible responses, and On-the-Fly Assessments.

To improve the teaching experience, we have added a projection mode that allows teachers to project and flip through the slides for a given lesson without revealing the Instructional Guide to students. 

The Instructional Guide has been redesigned to be more clearly organized and to ensure that teachers are able to quickly and easily find what they are looking for while planning to teach. The teacher view of lesson activities has also been updated with better labeling, icons, and color-coding. 

The Amplify Science Program Guide details information about the program, including its authorship, development, themes, and more. It serves as a resource for finding out more about the program’s structure, components, supports, how it meets standards, and flexibility.

Effective assessment of student’s science knowledge and abilities requires an understanding of the preconceptions that students bring to learning experiences. Giving teachers information about which students hold particular preconceptions will help them track student thinking over the course of a unit and make informed decisions related to instruction. We’re excited to now offer automatically scored and generated reports on student preconceptions for Pre-, Critical Juncture, and End-of-Unit Assessments, accessed via the Reporting app in the digital Teacher’s Guide. 

New differentiation strategies are now available in the lesson-level differentiation briefs, supporting teachers in making necessary adaptations to the lesson to ensure that all students are able to engage with the curriculum.

New phenomenon statements have been added to the lesson overviews on the curriculum website, clearly labeling and describing the anchor phenomenon and other types of phenomena explored throughout each unit.

New information about the Next Generation Science Standards is available to be shared with parents. This explains how students engage with three-dimensional learning to figure out real-world problems throughout each unit, and can be accessed from the Printable Resources section at the unit level. 

Color-coded 3-D Statements are now available in each lesson brief in addition to at the unit level where they were found in the past. These now offer a clear overview of how instruction supports three-dimensional learning for each lesson. 

Four new, summative “3-D Investigation Assessment with Scoring Guidance” activities have been added. These assessments provide students with an open-ended opportunity to show what they’ve learned by developing a scientific investigation from scratch. The 3-D Investigation Assessments can be found in the following units: 

•   Thermal Energy, Lesson 3.3

•   Ocean, Atmosphere, and Climate, Lesson 2.3, Activity 2

•   Populations and Resources, Lesson 2.4, Activity 2

•   Force and Motion, Lesson 2.2

Developed by Amplify*, these assessments are delivered three times per year to give teachers insight into how students are progressing toward mastery of the standards ahead of high-stakes, end-of-year assessments. They can be accessed as PDF files or integrated into QTI-compatible assessment platforms by school or district IT teams.

*The Amplify NGSS Benchmark Assessments were authored by Amplify and were not developed as part of the Amplify Science program or created by the Lawrence Hall of Science.

Easy-to-identify labeling for Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs), Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs), and Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) has been added to assessment opportunities to help teachers connect formative and summative assessments to specific NGSS dimensions. 

The Program Guide contains a suite of resources to plan, gather, annotate, and score portfolio assessments. The portfolio assessment process is designed to enable students to survey and reflect on the work they have done over a year, and for the teacher to look at growth across a year’s worth of learning. To support this effort, student- and teacher-facing rubrics are also provided.
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Additional opportunities for student-generated questions have been added throughout the curriculum to help students practice asking questions like scientists.

Print Student Investigation Notebooks with full-color articles are now available for purchase, giving teachers the ability to easily access the articles for a given unit offline.

Spanish-language versions of print student-facing materials are now available for middle school units. Spanish print add-on kits include:

One student Investigation Notebook with article compilations, all printed classroom materials (vocabulary wall cards, key concepts, unit and chapter questions, etc.), and all unit copymasters.

These homework experiences extend and reinforce classroom instruction by providing opportunities to support student learning through shared experiences with family and guardians. 

Three new articles were added:

•   Light Waves: Lesson 3.2 “Making Waves at Swim Practice”

•   Natural Selection: Lesson 2.1 “Glowing Jellies”

•   Rock Transformation: Lesson 2.3 “Why Can’t I Find Gold in My Backyard?”

Five articles were revised based on user feedback:

•   Plate Motion: Lesson 3.2 “Steno and the Shark”

•   Light Waves: Lesson 3.1 “How Fiber-Optic Communication Works”

•   Microbiome: Lesson 1.2 “Cells: The Basic Unit of Life” 

•   Metabolism Engineering Internship: Days 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, & 9“Food Engineer’s Dossier”

•   Natural Selection: Lesson 3.2 “How to Make a Venomous Cabbage”

To take advantage of the most up-to-date version of the curriculum we suggest teaching directly from the curriculum website. If you plan to teach offline and have printed/saved versions of the curriculum from the previous year, we have provided recommendations for which materials you should re-download and print to ensure you benefit from changes that impact the content you are teaching. 

This list does not include changes that do not directly impact your use of the curriculum in the classroom (i.e. typo fixes, font changes, etc.)

We suggest re-downloading the following new and revised projections, copymasters and investigation notebook pages for the units you teach. In addition, we suggest re-downloading all materials across the curriculum for the following three categories. 

•   Print Materials (8.5” x 11”)

•   Print Materials (11” x 17”)

•   all assessments and rubrics throughout the unit

These materials can be easily downloaded from the Unit Guide or the Digital Resources section in each lesson.

For more information, please contact scihelp@amplify.com