As you look through this curriculum you will find that it not only looks different than traditional textbooks, but it calls for both the teacher and students to take on more active roles in co-constructing understanding. To help this happen, the curriculum relies on sound strategies and principles of learning and teaching derived from observing many hours of classroom instruction. The curriculum:

• Follows a predictable structure.
• Requires thinking and exploration by students, yet it does not leave students to learn without teacher support
• Promotes students' metacognition in that it encourages students to continually think about how they are learning and thinking
• Promotes scientific thinking by asking students to provide grounds for their ideas
• Begins each chapter with a question that is intended to stimulate an explanatory need within students to critically analyze their mental models to see if they are developed enough to give an explanation
• Follows each initial question by individual student articulation of their initial ideas and prior knowledge and attempts to support their ideas or challenge them
• Scaffolds students to improve and refine ideas through dialogue and experience, first in small group discussions and then in large group activities
• Uses animations, transparencies, and drawings only after students have constructed as much of the model as possible to help them compare and further refine their models.
• Helps students develop skills while engaging in the curriculum that can be applied to other areas that they study.