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June 9, 2025 This guidebook is your resource for creating engaging, evidence-driven science lessons that empower students to build conceptual understanding through active meaning-making. Using an explore-before-explain instructional sequence, this book helps educators: •Facilitate hands-on, minds-on investigations of natural phenomena. •Guide students in identifying patterns and cause-and-effect relationships. •Promote self-directed learning by focusing on student…

Continue Reading Explore-Before-Explain Guidebook for Science Education

Published March 1, 2023 •YES- this book offers teachers, curriculum specialists, and school administrators ready-to-use model lessons for grades K-5 in life, physical, earth and space science. •YES- this book is ALL about an explore-before-explain mindset that realizes the best learning environments tap into students’ prior knowledge and experiences and situating student learning in science…

Continue Reading Activating Students’ Ideas: Linking Formative Assessment Probes to Instructional Sequence

Published March 29, 2018 This book shows middle and high school science teachers how to use evidence-based inquiry to help students achieve deeper conceptual understanding. Drawing on a wealth of research, authors Pat Brown and Jim Concannon demonstrate how direct, hands-on experience in the science classroom can enable your students to become more self-reliant learners.…

Continue Reading Inquiry-Based Science Activities in Grades 6-12: Meeting the NGSS

Published January 16, 2019 This new book shows elementary teachers how evidence-based science activities help students achieve deeper conceptual understanding. Drawing on a wealth of research, my co-author, James Concannon, and I demonstrate how direct, hands-on experience in the science classroom can enable your students to become more self-reliant learners. We also provide a wealth of…

Continue Reading Evidence-Based Science Activities in Grades 3–5: Meeting the NGSS

Published November 1, 2019 Instructional Sequence Matters, Grades 3–5 is a one-stop resource that will inspire you to reimagine how you teach science in elementary school. The book discusses two popular approaches for structuring your lessons: POE (Predict, Observe, and Explain) and 5E (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate). It also shows how simple shifts in…

Continue Reading Instructional Sequence Matters, Grades 3–5: Explore Before Explain

Published September 5, 2018 Instructional Sequence Matters shows how to make simple shifts in the way you arrange and combine activities to improve student learning. It also makes it easy for you to put the NGSS into practice. After explaining why sequencing is so important, I provide a complete self-guided tour to becoming an “explore-before-explain”…

Continue Reading Instructional Sequence Matters, Grades 6–8: Structuring Lessons with the NGSS in Mind

Published April 30, 2021 Instructional Sequence Matters, 9-12 is complete! New sections on shifting teacher mindsets, 5E lesson planning templates, and Professional Learning Communities. Virtual resources will be game-changers for distance learning! Get it here: https://my.nsta.org/resource/123183

Continue Reading Instructional Sequence Matters, Grades 9–12: Explore-Before-Explain in Physical Science

Read Jay McTighe’s and Pat’s newest white paper, Using Understanding by Design® to Make the NGSS Come Alive. Click the button below to have the white paper delivered directly to your inbox! Download the White Paper (A new tab will open up where you will be asked for your contact information and you will be…

Continue Reading White Paper: Using Understanding by Design® to Make the NGSS Come Alive

Read this recent article by Pat Brown and his colleague, Janice Koch, in the Brite Innovation Review. The power of exploration in science teaching. Brite Innovation Review, Summer 2020 Link: https://brite.nridigital.com/brite_summer20/explore-before-explain-science-teaching?fbclid=IwAR0rbProBATpClm_UuGkxNrC3LNHgzHZ66ndy3023WDbCDNMTo_W6pCk6C8

Continue Reading Article: The power of exploration in science teaching