HMH Science Dimensions — Elementary

We adopted this curriculum for our 4th-8th grade classes. There are pros and cons. The curriculum has strong assessments, projects, and labs that align with the standards. The student workbook is decent—providing reading, basic writing, and some extension activities/prompts. We’ve encountered two big issues: the instructional materials are lacking and do not align AT ALL with the assessments. If I were to use the instructional materials provided and that’s it, students would fail the tests and quizzes. We’ve had to get creative with how we prep students for the assessments because the questions are so challenging compared to the presentations and the workbook. The second issue is the lack of meaningful practice. It moved quickly from one lesson to the next as if kids could just learn the material instantly. Our teachers had to spend a lot of time creating practice materials or using other programs that generated practice questions, and review activities. In the future, we will probably look for something that offers more instructional and learning activities.

Some concepts that could be explained clearly and simply are presented in an unnecessarily complicated way. The vocabulary load can be heavy, and the pages often feel dense for 5th-grade students. At times, the examples do not clearly connect the vocabulary to the science concept students are expected to understand. This can make it difficult for students to identify the main idea without additional teacher explanation, visuals, or supplemental materials.

I made a science folder/binder for students to keep Lesson Quizzes to help prepare for the test. I also made review games in Wayground for the students to practice their vocabulary and prepare for quizzes and tests. I also created a writing prompt for each lesson using the Evidence Notebook suggestion prompts that students kept in their folder/binder.