PRIME Science is a science program that distributes physical, Earth, and life science topics across five grade levels, grades six through ten. The program’s levels A, B, and C correspond to grades six, seven, and eight; levels 1 and 2 correspond to grades nine and ten.

The program has been evaluated in terms of how well its content matches each of three topic-specific sets of key science ideas, and how well it provides effective instructional material in terms of a set of universal criteria for the teaching of science ideas. This report on PRIME Science assesses the program’s Earth science component.

The Earth science idea set focuses on the processes that change the surface of the Earth. In PRIME Science, the material relating to these key ideas is to be found in two chapters—one at the middle school level (level B) and the other at the high school level (level 1). Chapter 5: On the Rocks (level B) briefly presents some processes of weathering and erosion. Chapter 5: Restless Earth (level 1) presents ideas about plate tectonics, as well as earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain building processes.

The other two sections of this report—the Content Analysis and the Instructional Analysis—summarize the results of the evaluation of PRIME Science’s Earth science content and instructional efficacy.

In both sections, within-the-text page references to the evaluated materials have been clarified by the use of letter suffixes: “s” denotes the student text (as in “p. 33s”), and “t” denotes the Teacher’s Edition (as in “p. 33t”).

The reference works cited in this report are given as complete citations in the References list, along with those cited in other reports in this document. The References list can be accessed by clicking on the link at the beginning of each content and instructional analysis. To view a specific research reference while reading the content and instructional analyses, simply click on the in-text citation.

The key science ideas and the instructional analysis categories are presented and discussed under Project 2061 Analysis Procedure on the main menu.