Every Delaware science teacher I talk to hits the same wall in August: the state standards are clear, but nobody hands you a full year of lessons to teach them with. You are expected to build a coherent course from scratch, unit by unit, while three preps stare back at you. After enough summers spent rebuilding the same scaffolding, I started leaning on editable, ready-made units and adjusting them instead of starting from a blank document.
This guide answers the questions Delaware teachers actually search for: which standards the state follows, what a full-year set of editable units with notes includes, and how the grade 6, 7, and 8 bundles line up. The goal is to help you plan a real, standards-aligned year, not to sell you anything. Resources live in one box at the end.
Does Delaware use the NGSS?
Yes. Delaware adopted the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) directly as its state science standards. That means a Delaware middle school course is built on the NGSS performance expectations, with their three dimensions: disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts. Any curriculum you choose should be aligned to the NGSS, because in Delaware those are the standards.
This actually simplifies planning. Because Delaware uses the NGSS as written, you do not have to translate between a state-specific framework and a national one, they are the same thing here. Any well-built NGSS unit is, by definition, a Delaware unit. When you evaluate a curriculum, the question is just how faithfully it covers the NGSS performance expectations for your grade band, not whether it matches some separate Delaware code.
What is included in these editable Delaware science units?
Each grade bundle is a full year of editable curriculum units built around the NGSS, and the units come with notes. That means you get a sequence of units spanning the school year rather than one-off activities, the lesson content you teach from, and the ability to edit everything to fit your pacing, your students, and your classroom. The bundles are curriculum units, not escape rooms or single review games.
- Full-year scope: a connected sequence of units that covers the year, so the course holds together instead of being a pile of unrelated lessons.
- Notes included: teaching notes and content you can put in front of students, not just a blank shell.
- Editable: open the files and adjust wording, pacing, and examples for your own room and your own pacing guide.
- NGSS-aligned: built around the standards Delaware adopted, so what you teach maps to what the state expects.
I treat editable as the most important word on that list. No two Delaware classrooms run on the same calendar or the same students, so a curriculum you can open and rework beats a locked PDF every time. You keep the standards-aligned backbone and spend your energy on the adjustments that actually matter for your kids.
Which Delaware science bundle fits my grade?
There is a separate full-year editable bundle for each middle school grade: a 6th grade set, a 7th grade set, and an 8th grade set, each a complete year of NGSS-based units with notes. Pick the one that matches the grade you teach. If you cover more than one grade, you can pair the bundles to build a coherent grade 6 to 8 sequence.
- 6th grade: a full-year editable bundle of NGSS-based units with notes for your 6th grade course.
- 7th grade: a full-year editable bundle of NGSS-based units with notes for your 7th grade course.
- 8th grade: a full-year editable bundle of NGSS-based units with notes for your 8th grade course.
Because all three grades sit on the same NGSS foundation, the bundles fit together for teachers and departments mapping a full middle school progression. Keeping the same unit format across grade 6, 7, and 8 also makes life easier on students, who learn the routine once and carry it up through the building.
In Delaware, building a science course means building an NGSS course, and you do not have to build it from nothing. Start from a full-year set of editable units with notes, then bend it to your classroom, and you get a standards-aligned year without losing your summer to a blank planning document.