Science Techbook for Texas for Biology

The Science Techbook for Texas Biology curriculum scored 100% on all indicators of the TRR Report. Learn more here.

In each Concept, students are presented with a real-world phenomenon. The Engage lessons are carefully crafted to solicit student curiosity and encourage them to ask questions related to the core concepts for the TEKS associated with the concept.

Using the CER framework, students synthesize the evidence gathered while completing hands-on labs and activities, interactives, and literacy lessons during their Explore lessons. They evaluate the validity of this evidence to answer their original questions about the phenomenon from Engage.

Rubrics and the ability to provide personal feedback to their peers help students improve the rigor of their explanations over time.

In Elaborate lessons, students expand on the scientific ideas within each Concept by making connections and applying ideas to real-world experiences through STEM projects and STEM careers. Now that students have acted like scientists and engineers, they can learn how professional scientists and engineers study the same evidence they uncover in your classroom.

In the Evaluate lessons, you will find Concept Summative Assessments. The question types in these assessments mirror the look and feel of STAAR-based item types and include the new STAAR question types: text entry, hot spot, drag and drop, multipart, multi-select, and short constructed response.

Many assessments are automatically graded, and instructors can view individual student and class performance in the Concept Assessment Results section.

Discovery Education features, like Assessment Builder and Studio, give teachers the flexibility to create their own customized assessments to best meet their student’s needs.

The biology student curriculum is available in authentically translated Spanish to support Emergent Bilinguals.

Embedded strategies for Emergent Bilinguals aligned to the ELPS are available at point-of-use within the teacher materials. These include guidance for linguistic accommodations (communicated, sequenced, and scaffolded) commensurate with various levels of English language proficiency as defined by the ELPS.

Numerous lessons within the concept include detailed teacher support for how they can facilitate and encourage the use of students’ first language, alongside the acquisition of the English language. These features provide four scaffolded strategies that can be employed based on the language proficiency level of the students in the classroom.

Students and instructors can also take advantage of the Immersive Reader located within the interactive glossaries. Immersive Reader provides personalized access to the curriculum with features such as read-aloud, line focus, translation, and grammar markings, as well as the ability to adjust the size, style, and color of the font. Immersive Reader also authentically translates the text into over 100 languages. For more information on our multilingual resources, click here.

Yes! Science Techbook for Texas includes two reading levels for all grades 3-8 and Biology literacy lessons to support a deeper understanding of science content. Level A is on grand-band and Level B is 200 Lexile points below.