Storylines seem to be the new buzzword in chemistry education. Biology teachers have had access to storyline curriculums since the early 2000s, but chemistry (and physics) have only had wholly developed (and widely available) storyline curricula since 2019. Since then, the number of free, widely available curriculums has grown. So what are storylines actually?
I believe storylines are a natural evolution from PBL (project based learning), as a much more structured inquiry approach that can incorporate modeling, question forming, metacognition, and reflection. I found PBL to be extremely difficult to implement as a standalone teacher with students who had never experienced it before. In the world of evaluations and NGSS and standardized testing, where I need to ensure I cover specific content, PBL became too amorphous for me. I struggled to teach my students how to do PBL learning while also understanding content, I found it extremely challenging to find an authentic audience for my students’ final deliverable, and I had no idea how to assess individual understanding in a truly meaningful way. However, I did not want to go back to lectures and textbook assignments; that method did not work for my students so I was searching for something less open-ended than PBL and more student-centered than lecturing. Enter: STORYLINES.
Storylines have the ability to be whatever they need to be. If you take the available curriculum material verbatim and implement it like a canned curriculum, you will be using a lot of the edubabble buzzwords while checking boxes for NGSS. They are phenomena-based, inquiry lessons that require question forming techniques, modeling, reflection, and metacognition. If that works for you, that’s great! I am a big believer that teachers should use things that work for them and their unique situations. I’ve been using storylines for the better part of my teaching career now and I still make changes every year. The beauty of storylines, for me, is that once you are comfortable and confident with how to use them, you can amend them however you want. You can start with an anchoring phenomenon that your students can relate to (maybe oysters in Oregon are uninteresting for teenagers in somewhere like Ohio), get students to ask questions and create a driving question board, and then teach as you normally would.
The difference I have found using storylines is that students are better able to understand how what they are learning in chemistry helps answer real world problems. I never worry about hearing “when will we ever use this?” or if my students can answer “how does this lesson fit in the unit?” (asked by my evaluators frequently). I also know my students can (and do) tell their families all the things they learn in my class because we go back to the driving question board and they can visually see everything they have learned in that unit and how far they have left.
I believe in using research to make decisions, and the pedagogical research results show that students learn well and deeply when they can explore, make real-world connections, and engage with the content. Storyline curricula provide a framework that enables me to teach content in a way that best supports my students and also provide those key aspects.
I know teachers who have the capability of creating their own storylines and can rearrange their units easily to follow the direction of each individual class’ needs or questions, but I am very far away from having that level of creativity. If you are like me, or at least want to see what a full year storyline curriculum looks like, you have 3* free options (that I’m aware of as of the writing of this post). These 3* are NGSS-aligned and designed for 3-science schools with earth and space science standards incorporated. However, all 3* are fully editable so much so that almost all materials are Google Docs or Slides and teachers need to make a copy of the materials and can then easily remove, replace, or add to them in order to best suit their specific school, style, and students.
The 3* storylines available for chemistry that I know of are inquiryHub from UC Boulder, OpenSciEd, and Patterns by Beaverton School District/Portland Metro STEM Partnership.
A lot of the same people who wrote the inquiryHub curriculum were part of the team that wrote the OpenSciEd chemistry curriculum, and the newest inquiryHub website directs people to OpenSciEd. I followed the inquiryHub curriculum fairly closely the first time I taught it, but I never used it verbatim and added or removed content as I saw fit. Recently I have taught a combination of OpenSciEd, Patterns, and inquiryHub in addition to incorporating resources, lessons, and materials from ChemEd X posts, AACT, or other resources to expand, enhance, or introduce content.
OpenSciEd and inquiryHub:
- Provides a thoroughly fleshed out curriculum
- LOTS of support for implementation
- includes a unit overview that has a table of every lesson in the unit,
- the lesson title/question,
- the science skill/practice that will be used,
- how many minutes the lesson will take, what the students will learn in that lesson,
- and the driving phenomenon.
- Can be excruciatingly slow for teachers and students, especially when it’s a teacher’s first year with the curriculum
- Provides vetted, pedagogically thorough inquiry support to help students deeply connect with content
Patterns:
- A bit disorganized and content is still being moved and changed (as of the 24-25 school year)
- Has the potential to differentiate to an increased rigor easily (can be used in an honors class)
- I sometimes struggled to see the connection between lessons within a unit and had to add a lot of additional resources in order to make the lessons flow and continue to support the anchoring phenomenon.
- I personally prefer the unit order of Patterns to OpenSciEd, but I always teach gas laws first.
- The end lesson of each unit is a week-long engineering design assignment
*inquiryHub is now linking directly to OpenSciEd, although at the time of this post their original materials are still findable online. Additionally, through All Species Education Consulting, Charlie Pozen is rolling out a storyline curriculum for chemistry, although at the time of this post it is only available to teachers who have attended the associated PD sessions.
inquiryHub: https://www.colorado.edu/program/inquiryhub/curricula/inquiryhub-chemistry
OpenSciEd: https://www.openscied.org/curriculum/high-school/high-school-instructional-materials/
Patterns: https://hsscience4all.org/chemistry