Van Andel Institute for Education K–8 Science Lessons

The Challenge

Van Andel Institute for Education (VAI) had built something real through its on-site field trip programming: hands-on, inquiry-based science experiences that stuck with students. The next step was extending that reach to classrooms that would never make the trip.

The source materials reflected the richness of the original field trips, but they had been created by different educators, in different formats, and with varying levels of instructional detail. Turning them into a consistent, classroom-ready K–8 product meant filling gaps, establishing structure, and building teacher support from the ground up, all while preserving what made the original experiences feel like VAI.

The project also marked a significant first for the organization: It was VAI’s first time working with an outside vendor to develop educational materials. SRM needed to earn the company’s trust, understand VAI’s instructional voice, and deliver a product that felt like VAI’s own.

The Partnership

Six Red Marbles partnered with Van Andel Institute for Education to develop 40 K–8 science lessons designed for classroom use.

VAI brought a strong inquiry-based education philosophy, existing field trip content, and a clear sense of what the materials needed to feel like. SRM brought content development, instructional design, project management, and production support to turn that vision into a coherent, scalable lesson set.

The teams worked closely throughout the engagement. SRM collaborated with VAI leadership and content stakeholders, including the Chief Education Officer and internal content creators. Field trip teachers also reviewed and commented on lessons, giving the team additional insight into how the materials would function in real classrooms. That direct teacher feedback shaped both content decisions and design direction.

The Strategy

SRM’s strategy focused on turning varied source content into a consistent, teacher-friendly K–8 science product without losing the energy and inquiry-centered spirit of VAI’s field trip experiences.

Key decisions shaped the work:

Create consistency without flattening the experience: Develop templates for blueprints and lessons so every lesson followed a clear structure while still allowing each science experience to feel distinctive.

Build from uneven source materials: Use existing teacher-developed field trip content as the foundation, then fill instructional gaps to create complete, coherent classroom lessons.

Prioritize teacher usability: Design teacher guides as the central road map, with step-by-step facilitation notes, prep guidance, teacher tips, materials lists, and flexible implementation options.

Make student materials engaging and classroom-ready: Develop student slides and activity resources that could support active, hands-on inquiry in K–8 classrooms.

Learn the instructional voice: Work closely—and iteratively—with VAI reviewers to refine tone, teacher language, and design direction until every lesson felt aligned with VAI’s approach to curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking. For an organization working with a vendor for the first time, that alignment wasn’t a given. It was built.

Strengthen production handoffs through clearer design guidance: Use AI-assisted workflows to generate design briefs for the production teams, helping translate client feedback and product expectations into actionable visual direction.

What SRM Designed & Developed

The full engagement included content development, instructional design, visual design, and production for 40 K–8 science lessons.

Key deliverables included:

Lesson blueprints

Teacher guides in editable Google Docs

Student slides in Google Slides

Student worksheets and activity resources in editable Google Docs

Design templates for teacher and student materials

Production-ready lesson files

Art and page proof review support

The teacher guide was the anchor deliverable for each lesson—connecting student-facing slides, worksheets, hands-on activities, teacher tips, and classroom discussion prompts into one coherent experience that a teacher could pick up and run with.

The Learning Experience

The final lessons give teachers everything they need to bring inquiry-based science into the classroom. Each lesson pairs a detailed teacher guide with student-facing slides and editable activity materials, structured so teachers can facilitate confidently and adapt as needed.

The Grade 4 Earth’s Changing Climate lesson shows the model in action. Students begin by distinguishing weather from climate using real-world maps and images, then explore how climate change has reshaped places like Nyangai Island before investigating two central questions: Can gases affect climate? Can colors?

Those two investigations run in parallel: Students set up their greenhouse gas containers under heat lamps early in the lesson, then conduct the color-and-climate investigation while the gas experiment runs, returning to check temperatures at timed intervals. The interleaving keeps the pace active and mirrors how real scientific inquiry works.

Throughout, the teacher guide supports without overscripting. Color-coded headers and recurring inquiry icons help teachers and students follow the learning arc, and teacher tips offer vocabulary support, success skill spotlights, extension options, and practical strategies such as the Seven-Word Challenge and Say-Ask-Connect. A “Teacher’s Take” feature on the cover page offers a real K–8 teacher’s perspective on what to expect before the lesson begins.

The lesson closes with an engineering design challenge: Students act as community planning committee members tasked with building a model of a city area designed to lower temperature and minimize climate impacts. They draw on their investigation findings, plan in pairs, build from a shared supply table, and defend their design choices using a claim, evidence, reasoning framework. Science stays active all the way to the end.

The Impact

The project gave Van Andel Institute for Education a classroom-ready K–8 science product that extends the reach of its on-site field trip programming. Classrooms that may never visit VAI in person can now access materials that carry the same inquiry-centered approach structured for the school year, adaptable to students, and built to hold up in real classroom conditions.

The engagement also helped VAI navigate the learning curve of working with an external development partner for the first time. Through strong project management, responsive content development, iterative review, and close attention to design feedback, SRM helped the client move from a varied set of source materials to a finished, consistent product while keeping VAI’s instructional voice intact throughout.

Why It Matters

Inquiry-based science learning depends on more than good ideas. Teachers need materials that are clear, complete, flexible, and engaging enough to use—lesson after lesson, with real students, under real classroom constraints.

This project shows how a strong development partner can help an education organization scale what already works. By translating VAI’s field trip experiences into consistent, classroom-ready lessons, SRM helped preserve the spark of hands-on discovery while making that experience accessible to far more teachers and students.

For K–8 science classrooms, that matters. These lessons turn science from something students read about into something they do: investigating, building, reasoning, collaborating, and applying evidence to real-world problems.

The content team worked with us as thought partners, helping us identify a clear direction and execute as quickly as possible. The content team and the PM took on new learning curves to accommodate our requests with a positive attitude and made everything come together as seamlessly as possible.

Terra Tarango Chief Education Officer/Director, Van Andel Institute for Education

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