Welcome to Amplify Science Pennsylvania
(6–8)!

Amplify Science Pennsylvania (6–8) combines our nationally recognized, proven curriculum with custom lessons specifically designed to ensure that you are meeting Pennsylvania’s STEELS standards.

Developed by the science education experts at UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science and the digital learning team at Amplify, our program features:

• A phenomena-based approach, in which students construct a complex understanding of each unit’s anchor phenomenon.
• A blend of cohesive storylines, hands-on investigations, rich discussions, literacy-rich activities, and digital tools.
• Carefully crafted units, chapters, lessons, and activities designed to deliver true three-dimensional learning.
• An instructional design that supports all learners in accessing all standards.

The Amplify Science Pennsylvania program is rooted in the proven, research-based pedagogy of Do, Talk, Read, Write, Visualize. Here’s how each element works:

Our cyclical lesson design ensures that students receive multiple exposures to concepts through a variety of modalities. As they progress through the lessons within a unit, students build and deepen their understanding, increasing their ability to develop and refine complex explanations of the unit’s phenomenon.

It’s this proven program structure and lesson design that enables Amplify Science Pennsylvania to address 100% of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and support students in mastering the Pennsylvania Science Standards.

While every unit delivers three-dimensional learning experiences and engages students in gathering evidence from a rich collection of sources, each unit also serves a unique instructional purpose.

In grades 6–8:

• One unit is a launch unit.
• Three units are core units.
• Two units are engineering internships.

Our lessons follow a structure that is grounded in regular routines while still being flexible enough to allow for a variety of learning experiences.

In fact, our multimodal instruction offers more opportunities for students to construct meaning, and practice and apply concepts, than any other program. What’s more, our modular design means our units can be flexibly arranged to support your instructional goals.

With your Amplify Science Pennsylvania print samples, you’ll find unit-specific Teacher’s References Guides and Student Investigation Notebooks for each grade level.

A note about the Teacher’s Reference Guides:

It’s important that your committee sees the full breadth and depth of our instruction. For that reason, we’ve provided a copy of each of our unit-specific Teacher Reference Guides.

Teachers do not use these robust reference guides for day-to-day teaching. For that, we have a hands-free Teacher’s Guide!

• Teacher Reference Guide: Unlike a typical Teacher Guide that requires a series of supplemental books to support it, our encyclopedic reference guide is chock-full of everything a teacher needs to fully implement our program and the NGSS.
• Ready-to-Teach Lesson Slides: For daily instruction, teachers need their hands free. That’s why we created ready-to-teach lesson slides for every single lesson. What’s more, the slides are editable and include suggested teacher talk and point-of-use differentiation and other instructional tips. Click to learn more.

A note about the Materials Kits:

Hands-on learning is at the heart of Amplify Science Pennsylvania, and is integrated into every unit. In order to make hands-on learning more manageable for busy teachers, Amplify Science Pennsylvania materials are organized into unit-specific kits.

Our unit-specific kits:

• Include more materials. We give teachers enough materials to support 200 student uses.
• Are more manageable. Unlike other programs that require large groups of students to share limited sets of materials, our kits include enough to support small groups of four to five students.
• Include supportive videos. Each hands-on activity provides clear instructions for the teacher, with more complex activities supported by video demonstrations and illustrations.

Within each kit, we provide grade-specific lists of all materials included, which you can also find using the links below.

• Grade 6: Materials Kit List
• Grade 7: Materials Kit List
• Grade 8: Materials Kit List

Amplify Science Pennsylvania is committed to providing support to meet the needs of all learners, including multiple access points for Spanish-speaking students. Developed in conjunction with Spanish-language experts and classroom teachers, several components are available in Spanish across the Amplify Science Pennsylvania curriculum.

Spanish-language materials include:

• Pennsylvania STEELS Standards Alignment
• Research Highlights
• Program Structure
• Phenomena
• Amplify Science Pennsylvania and the 5E Model
• Approaches to Assessment
• Science and Literacy Integration
• Hands-On Investigations (Integrated-Specific Model)
• Hands-On Investigations (Discipline-Specific Model)
• Engineering in Amplify Science Pennsylvania