The program was originally developed and trial tested in urban and suburban San Francisco Bay Area school districts and field-tested and implemented nationally in ten sites.
The FOSS program uses several instructional pedagogies: inquiry-based learning (each investigation is guided by questions), hands-on learning and active investigation (students work with materials and conduct investigations to attempt to answer questions), student-to-student interaction, writing (students keep careful notes in science notebooks), and research/reading (readings are included to enhance or underscore active investigation—students work with materials prior to doing any reading).
Each middle school course includes a kit of student materials, a teacher guide, a Science Resources book, a lab notebook, and a course-specific multimedia component.
The FOSS website, FOSSweb, contains additional online activities for students and resources for parents and teachers.
FOSS is in use in every state in the country with over 100,000 teachers and 2 million students and is in approximately 16% of the nation's school districts.