If you teach middle school science in Virginia, you have probably run into the same snag I have: you find a polished unit online, start matching it to your standards, and realize it was built for a different framework. Virginia is not an NGSS state, so many of the most popular resources out there do not line up cleanly with what we are actually expected to teach.

This guide answers the questions Virginia teachers actually search for: which standards the state uses, how middle school science is organized into courses, and which editable curriculum fits the course you teach. The goal is to help you plan a real, SOL-aligned year, not to sell you anything. Resources live in one box at the end.

What science standards does Virginia use?

Virginia is not an NGSS state. Virginia science is built on the Science Standards of Learning, usually called the SOL, which is the state's own standards framework rather than the Next Generation Science Standards used in many other states. Because the two differ, curriculum written for NGSS does not always match what Virginia teachers are required to cover, so alignment matters when you pick resources.

I have watched colleagues lose planning time to this. A unit labeled NGSS-aligned is not automatically Virginia-aligned, because Virginia did not adopt the NGSS, it wrote and maintains its own Science Standards of Learning. The two can cover similar science, but they are not the same document, and the course names and sequence in Virginia follow the SOL.

In practice this means I check what a resource is actually built against before I commit a year to it. For Virginia, I want materials organized around the SOL from the start, not generic units I have to bend and re-sequence to make them fit.

How is Virginia middle school science organized?

Virginia commonly organizes middle school science as named courses rather than a strict NGSS grade band. A typical path is a 6th Grade Science course, then Life Science and Physical Science courses across the middle grades. Each course has its own SOL, so the practical question is less about your grade number and more about which course you are assigned to teach.

This is the part that trips up out-of-state resources. Because Virginia builds around courses like 6th Grade Science and Life Science, the content does not always map onto a generic grade 6, 7, 8 split. When I plan, I start from the course on my schedule and find curriculum aligned to that course's SOL, instead of assuming a national grade-band bundle will line up.

Which Virginia science curriculum fits my course?

Match the curriculum to the course you teach. There is a 6th Grade Virginia editable curriculum built as 15 units with notes for the 6th Grade Science course, and a Virginia Life Science editable curriculum built as 9 units with notes for the Life Science course. Each is a sequence of SOL-aligned, editable units rather than one-off activities, so the course holds together.

I treat editable as the most important word here. No two Virginia 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 SOL-aligned backbone and spend your energy on the adjustments that actually matter, the pacing, the wording, the examples for your own room.

In Virginia, building a science course means building an SOL course, and you do not have to build it from nothing. Start from a set of editable units with notes aligned to your course, whether that is 6th Grade Science or Life Science, then bend it to your classroom, and you get a standards-aligned year without losing your summer to a blank planning document.