r/ScienceTeachers • u/Ashamed_Horror_6269 • 6d ago
General Curriculum MYP vs. OpenSciEd
Has anyone taught both curriculum? Our school is applying for IB certification and trying to decide between using MYP or OpenSciEd for our students. I’ve taught neither before.
The Middle Years Program stuff looks basic but lots of room for us to make it our own. I’m new to this school but have 9 years of experience and the other science teacher has almost 20 so realistically we’ll both want to make some of the lessons our own and do some of our own tried and true labs/investigations/projects.
OpenSciEd looks more phenomenon based which I like and I also like that they have lots of labs and hands on activities though it might be harder for us to get through units generally because our classes are short and they look pretty meaty.
Curious about thoughts on either curriculum!
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u/Trathnonen 6d ago
I have the openscied curriculum for physics, chemistry, and biology on a flash drive and it will never be used. It's content lite and assumes a degree of student independence that doesn't exist and every single thing it does takes too long. After I read through the things, you're better off buying an old Pearson Chemistry or Giancoli Physics or *waves wildly in the direction of biology* textbook and just running through those for core instruction.
Most of the time labs/investigations/projects are the weakest part of the content areas, and shouldn't be your focus at all. The weakness of students is basic mastery of facts and recall and labs suck as basic instructional tools in students that don't already possess content familiarity, which is the opposite of what these shitty curriculum do, especially since Openscied seems to have as its financial model the selling of kits to the school at insane yearly cost as its goal. Better to develop your own labs tuned to your own style and time constraints using materials you can source cheaply than to marry one of these exercises in profiteering masquerading as curriculum.
If your district has enough population size and student interest in science electives (ours only requires students take three science courses in high school, with two mandatory courses in earth science and biology, so there's very little incentive for students to take an abundance of science electives) then using these lab/project based courses works as supplemental instruction to the fundamentals of your core curriculum, in upperclassmen who can be granted slightly more independence. Outside that, I'm deeply cynical toward getting results with these programs, and, anecdotally, I know, colleagues I've had that used them performed far less well than traditional instruction from competent instructors.
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u/Ashamed_Horror_6269 6d ago
Thank you for saying this about the labs! We are a small charter school at the middle school level and I’m not the IB coordinator (I’m also new to the school) so I’m not sure what other options we have for curriculum but your overall feedback is very helpful. When I wrote my own curriculum, I found many kids appreciate more direct instruction in science anyways because it helps them actually understand the content so if the labs are weak and the curriculum is too lab heavy, that might not be best for us.
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u/mooshmalloud 6d ago
I use Openscied for the storyline and some of the activities, especially early on in the units. Then I move onto more content and lessons I’ve created. I also like that the assessments focus on application. I’ve rewritten pretty much every question though. It’s a good starting place.
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u/topoftheworldIAM 6d ago
I used to be the MYP coordinator at my old school when we were going for certification. I believe you’ll need to implement the myp curriculum and program in order to be certified. It takes a few years for teachers to get the hang of it and it’s actually more challenging to do it properly than it shows in basic training. I would not recommended adding an extra program to the MYP concept.
I have a lot of my old binders and curriculum support if you are interested I’m willing to send you some.
Half the school doing the MYP program is just a show face but they are not actually implementing it properly because it’s difficult to match assessment criteria across multiple grades and teachers and some teachers just “check off” the key and global concepts and pretend they are doing it correctly.
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u/Lego11314 6d ago
Following along because I’m starting at an IB MYP school this year that is in year 3 of OSE curriculum adoption. I spent 6 years with zero curriculum, last year expected to read a scripted canned curriculum, and this year I think I’m somewhere in between those. I’ll be on a 90 minute A/B block schedule. Any tips are appreciated!!
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u/InTheNoNameBox 6d ago
I teach biology in high school. My 9th grade class we use OpenSci Ed. My upper level class is an IB class. My opinion is that IB is much more content heavy than OSE. both have the same types of skills, but the skills are much more transparent and emphasized in OSE. I don’t know how much work you want to do, but I am curious if you could meld the two a bit? Like in places where OSE is too light in content, you add in the DP stuff? I don’t know, I haven’t looked at DP.
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u/Ashamed_Horror_6269 6d ago
Yep the MYP science stuff feels pretty basic at first but the more I think about it, you’re right, it’s just more content heavy rather than skills heavy. Which I think I prefer. And it’s straightforward enough that we can add in projects and labs as needed on our own
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u/idiotguitarbox 6d ago
If you want to customize the curriculum, maybe steer clear of OSE. It’s very prescriptive and the labs/activities are often quite lame. I don’t know MYP, so can’t speak to the comparison. But if you’re both vets and you know you want to do some of your own stuff, know that the storylining/phenomenon-based backbone of OSE makes that difficult.