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Pixton for Science: Make Scientific Thinking Visible

Students use multimodal writing to model scientific processes, explain phenomena, apply vocabulary, and show the reasoning behind what they know.

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Turn Science Learning Into Explanations You Can See and Assess

Pixton helps students explain science, not just repeat facts and vocabulary. Students combine writing and visuals to model systems and processes, explain cause and effect, support claims with evidence, and communicate scientific ideas clearly.

As students build their explanations panel by panel, teachers can see where understanding is strong, where misconceptions appear, and where students need support.

What’s Inside Pixton’s Interactive Science Lessons

Pixton has tools and ready-to-use resources for multimodal science writing, explanation, and assessment.

Pixton Science Lesson Ideas

Science Lesson Ideas

Save planning time with ready-to-use Pixton Lesson Ideas. Students can model processes, explain phenomena, sequence scientific events, apply vocabulary, and demonstrate understanding across topics such as ecosystems, forces and motion, cells, energy, weather, and more.

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Pixton Science Story Starters

Featured Content and Story Starters

Pixton’s Featured Content gives students characters, settings, objects, and other visuals connected to science topics and concepts.

Story Starters provide another way to begin. Students might explain a scientific process, illustrate a lab procedure, model cause and effect, or respond to a question such as, “Why did this experiment produce that result?”

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Social Studies Activity Maker

Activity Maker

Create a science writing or assessment activity in minutes with Pixton’s Activity Maker. Enter a scientific concept, skill, standard, or learning goal and generate an activity students can use to explain, model, sequence, compare, or demonstrate understanding.

Pixton Interactive Rubric

Interactive Rubric

Pixton includes an interactive rubric that helps students review their work before submitting it and gives teachers a consistent way to assess written and visual communication.

See the Interactive Rubric

Assessments

Assess Multimodal Science Work

The student decides	You can see
What order the panels go	Sequence, cause and effect, and understanding of a scientific process. Whether events happen in a logical and accurate order.
What the characters say	Scientific vocabulary in context, explanation, reasoning, and whether students can communicate concepts in their own words.
What appears in each panel	Important parts of a system, process, experiment, or phenomenon. Scientific accuracy, relationships, and relevant detail. Whether observations, data, examples, or scientific information support their explanation or claim.
How things change between panels	Cause and effect, changes over time, interactions between variables, and whether students understand what produced the change.
What they leave out	What they judged most important. Missing steps, relationships, or evidence can also reveal misconceptions or gaps in understanding.

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Why You’ll Love Teaching Science With Pixton

Students Want to Explain What They Know

Pixton gives students an approachable way to work through complex scientific ideas. Instead of starting with a blank page, they build explanations using scenes, characters, captions, dialogue, sequencing, and other visual choices.
Built to Fit Your Science Curriculum

Pixton fits seamlessly into your science curriculum. Activities align with U.S. state and Canadian provincial science standards, supporting practices such as modeling, explaining phenomena, sequencing steps, and using evidence. The Activity Maker helps you create custom, curriculum-aligned lessons in minutes.
Designed to Make Your Day Easier

Start with ready-to-use Lesson Ideas, Featured Content, Story Starters, rubrics, and the Activity Maker instead of building every science activity from scratch. Pixton can support one quick check for understanding or repeated multimodal writing throughout a science unit.

Why Pixton Works for Science

Learner Variability badge

Students use words and visuals together to organize information, communicate meaning, and make their thinking visible, giving teachers another way to see and assess understanding.

Pixton is also backed by independent validation and research into multimodal learning, writing, comprehension, and student engagement. Pixton meets ESSA Tier 2 evidence standards and has earned Digital Promise certifications for Research-Based Design and Learner Variability.

Explore Pixton Research & Evidence

Testimonials

Karen M. – Teacher

California, United States

Pixton can be used with all subject areas - science, history, math, language arts. Also, it's fun for kids with a wide range of academic abilities.
Jennifer B. – Teacher

Ontario, Canada

My students love Pixton, and I use it for integrating media across other subjects, such as Science, Social Studies, Visual Arts and Language.
Patrick W. – Teacher

Ontario, Canada

Pixton is versatile, supporting a wide range of subjects beyond ELA, such as history, science, and math, by allowing students to create comics that explain concepts or tell stories. It enhances student engagement, creativity, and confidence, making it a valuable tool for any classroom.
Corneka M. – Teacher

Georgia, United States

Pixton is an excellent way for students to demonstrate their learning in a creative way. I use it in math, science, and reading, and it makes a huge difference in student engagement.
Donna B. – Teacher

Texas, United States

I love allowing my students to use Pixton to retell stories from class. They also use Pixton to explain content from Science and Social Studies!
Sarah – Teacher

Ontario, Canada

I have been using Pixton since the pandemic, and my students find it AMAZING...they are engaged and on task throughout our media projects, and loooove that they can turn their learning in Social Studies, Science and even Dance into a comic.

Frequently Asked Questions

Teachers can use Pixton for scientific explanations, process models, vocabulary practice, lab reflections, cause-and-effect activities, and formative or summative assessment.
Students combine writing and visuals to sequence processes, explain relationships, show cause and effect, and communicate their reasoning. Their choices help teachers see both understanding and misconceptions.
Yes. Students can model processes such as the water cycle, energy transfer, forces and motion, ecosystems, cell functions, and chemical changes panel by panel.
Yes. Students can state a claim, present supporting evidence, and explain their reasoning using captions, dialogue, labels, scenes, and sequential panels.
Yes. Pixton can support diagnostic, formative, and summative assessment by giving students another way to explain concepts and demonstrate scientific understanding.
Yes. Students use scientific terminology within explanations, dialogue, captions, and labels, helping them apply vocabulary in meaningful context rather than simply define terms.