The Minnesota Literacy Council (MLC) has created a large set of science lesson plans on the content assessed by the GED exam. The MLC science lesson plans cover the same three subdomains tested in Earth & Space Science, Life Science and Physical Science. For example, here are some of the lesson plan topics in life science:

• Cells and Cell Division
• Mitosis and DNA
• Traits and Genes
• Heredity
• Darwin and Evolution
• Natural Selection
• Photosynthesis and Respiration
• Ecosystems

A typical MLC science lesson plan is structured as a reading and writing lesson, with journal writing and a K-W-L (What do you know? What do you want to know? What did you learn?) chart used as an introduction to a text-based lesson. Many of the lessons include reading comprehension questions and summarizing activities after reading short textbook style readings on the science topic of the lesson. There are also video links to related content. For example, Lesson 4.5 on Traits & Genes references a video explaining how to use a Punnet Square to determine the probable traits of a set of parents’ descendants, a topic also covered in the lesson materials. The readings for each lesson are included in the pdf, which also includes teacher notes and an answer key.

Sample materials from Traits & Genes lesson:

A word of warning: I noticed that some of the links within the lessons no longer work, so there are some videos and supplementary materials that you may need to search for in other ways. For example, there isn’t a link for the Punnett Square video in the Traits and Heredity lesson. However, there are many videos available that explain this content, so it shouldn’t be hard to fill in gaps.

If I were teaching with these lessons, I would consider making a few modifications to these lessons in order to extend the lesson launch and emphasis the pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading lesson structure. I might write a simple prediction guide with true/false statements for students to review before the lesson. For example, here are a few statements I might put in a prediction guide before teaching the Photosynthesis and Respiration lesson:

“Plants can survive without oxygen.”

“Plants and animals use energy from glucose (sugar).”

“Animals breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen.”

“All energy on Earth comes from the sun.”

“If you fill your home with house plants, there will be more oxygen in the air.”

A prediction guide with a few possibly controversial statements can draw out what students know and what they might curious about before introducing a K-W-L chart or going to the reading to find out what’s true. It’s important not tell students which statements are true and false. Let them use the readings to find out.

I might also think about how to use images to introduce science topics. Images are a nice opportunity to use a routine like What do you notice? What do you wonder? For example, to introduce the lesson on plate tectonics, I might show students the following image (from Wikipedia) and ask them what they notice and what they wonder. I would like to see some guesses and questions about what is happening and why before introducing a reading.    

Even without modifications, these MLC lessons are really useful since they collect readings, student materials and a lesson structure on various science topics that we can bring directly into the classroom. I’d love to hear from other teachers if you use these materials and if you make successful modifications.