Reddit reviews Ambitious Science Teaching

Step 1:
Identify the standards in your coursemap (see NGSS Appendix K) that you have to teach and "bundle" (see Achieve Inc.) them into meaningful unit-sized amounts.

Step 2:
Once you have the standards arranged in front of you for your unit, review them and select the three to four standards that have the greatest explanatory power. That is: the three to four that -- given sufficient attention -- could explain the other ones.

Step 3:
Focusing on those three to four standards, think of a phenomenon -- something that happens in nature -- that students would have to use those three to four standards to make sense of.

Step 4:
Write a "gapless explanation" at a level just beyond the grasp of your students.

Step 5:
Within your gapless explanation, identify they strands that students will need to investigate to come up with their own explanation of the phenomenon.

Step 6:
Plan activities that will help your students get those pieces they will need for their explanations of the phenomenon.

Step 0:
Read this book: Ambitious Science Teaching