Source: Digital Access Key Image; Morgue File; http://mrg.bz/xJqkIW
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you are having a wonderful day today. Today, we're going to be looking at understanding the Next Generation Science Standards. And for today's lesson, I've chosen a quote by Carl Sagan which says "somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known." And I think that really sums up the awesomeness of science. By the end of today's lesson, you will be able to review the origin of the Next Generation Science Standards, as well as analyze the Next Generation Science Standards and all of the specific elements involved.
So, first, let's look at the history and the development of these standards. The development of these standards is really a wonderful collaboration between the National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association, and The American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as the Achieve group. All of them collaborated together to develop these standards.
First, what happened in this process was the National Academy of Sciences developed a framework for the K through 12 science education. And what I love about this is it was based on current research making it exceptionally applicable to students who really wanted to continue a career within the sciences. Then states led by Achieve developed the K through 12 science standards, including content and practice standards across many different science disciplines and grades. Therefore, the Next Generation Science Standards was really based upon that initial framework that was developed. Next, let's take a look at that framework.
This framework can be found at the following website. It's quite a long website to write down, but it's a wonderful place to get the specifics of the framework that we're going to discuss. This framework is really broken down into three different dimensions.
These three dimensions include disciplinary core ideas-- what are the major elements within the discipline that we want students focusing in on-- content specific information, as well as cross cutting concepts. And we're going to break each of these elements down just a little bit more as we go on. Let's take a closer look at these disciplinary core ideas.
The disciplinary ideas are grouped into four large domains. The first of which are the physical sciences, next, focusing in on the domain of life sciences, the Earth and space sciences, and, finally, engineering, technology, and the application of science. These are the four major areas covered in the science standards. In order for something to be considered a core idea, it needs to meet at least two of the following criteria. But, ideally, it will meet four.
First, it needs to have a broad importance across multiple disciplines or be a key organizing concept of one of the disciplines. It needs to provide a key tool for understanding and investigating more complex ideas. The idea should relate to the interests and life experiences of students, society, and/or personal concerns. Finally, it should be teachable and learnable over multiple grades. This is the way that they've really found to delineate interesting ideas and elements within science along with those core ideas.
Cross-cutting concepts have application across all domains of science, hence the idea of cross-cutting or cutting across. As such, they're a really great way of linking different domains, and you can look here at the various areas that are considered cross-cutting concepts-- patterns, similarity, and diversity, cause and effect, scale proportion, and quantity, energy and matter, and so on. You can see how these major elements could be seen in all of those areas that we discussed, whether it be Earth science, space science, engineering, physical sciences, life sciences, and so on.
The beauty of these cross-cutting concepts is they provide a way to organize interrelating knowledge across science fields, kind of a way of working between different classes in order for students to really find that coherence and that scientifically based view of the world, bringing all of the different, varied areas of science together. Now let's focus in on the science and engineering practices. What these are are the behaviors that scientists engage in as they are going to investigate and build models and theories about the natural world. We're really looking at a key set of practices that engineers use as they design and build their systems. How should we be instructing students as scientists and engineers to behave as they go into the field?
First, there's an emphasis on asking questions and defining problems. The asking questions part is really more for those scientists, and defining problems that need to be fixed are really focusing in for those engineers. Developing and using models-- this not only helps to think critically about a situation but also really helps with that collaboration.
Planning and carrying out those investigations as well as analyzing and interpreting the data that comes from those investigations-- there's a real focus in on the practice of using mathematics and computational thinking to help broaden one's mindset as well as, especially for science, constructing explanations for why something exists and for engineering designing those solutions to the problems that were defined earlier. There's a real emphasis put on engaging in argument from the evidence, really getting into that mindset of questioning what is happening in order to come to a best possible solution, as well as obtaining, evaluating, and then communicating the information that's found. As with any of these standards, there are positives and negatives that come along with them.
First, these have not been adopted by the majority of states yet. Even though 26 states help lead in the creation of this work, they have not yet adopted these standards. However, most resources are indicating, especially those that are right off the shelf resources, indicate that they are aligned with NEXT Generation Science Standards, a really wonderful helpful one is The Equip Rubric which can be found at nextgenscience.org/resources. It's a wonderful tool to evaluate the alignment and to determine the degree to alignment of materials lessons and units as you're developing that science course. These standards are written a little bit differently from the common core state standards as they are written as performance standards.
And you probably noticed that as we sort of went through some of the elements of the standards. There is also an option to follow the standards using two different approaches. The first approach is a topical approach, or you could follow the standards using the disciplinary core idea approach. Again, a little bit of a different vantage point to looking at these standards.
Now that we've reached the end of our lesson today, you've been able to review the origin of the Next Generation Science Standards, as well as analyze the Next Generation Science Standards. I'd like to take just a moment now for reflection. After learning about the Next Generation Science Standards, I want you to think about what it will be like to teach those as a science teacher understanding that your colleagues in other states might not be using the same standards. What difficulties would come of this, and are there any potential benefits?
It's your turn now to apply what you've learned in this video. The additional resources section could be super helpful to you. This section is designed to help you discover useful ways to apply what you've learned here. And each link includes a brief description so that you can easily target the resources that you want.
(00:00-00:21) Intro
(00:22-00:34) Objectives
(00:35-01:41) History of NG Science Standards
(01:42-02:27) The Framework
(02:28-03:53) Disciplinary Core Ideas
(03:54-05:04) Cross Cutting Concepts
(05:05-06:44) Science & Engineering Practices
(06:45-08:04) Positives & Negatives
(08:05-08:14) Review
(08:15-09:12) Reflection
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
The NGSS site is a comprehensive website that includes the NGSS standards, resources for teachers and embedded professional learning videos and resources. It is important to note that when searching the standards, you can search by topic or by disciplinary core idea (dci). Most school districts make a collective decision on which method to use when incorporating the standards into their curriculum and instruction. This link provides you access to both the topic view and the dci view.
http://www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards
How to Read the Next Generation Science Standards
The NGSS are challenging to read at first. Their structure is different than most standards that teachers work with on a regular basis. In an effort to help teachers understand how to read the standards, NGSS has developed this useful video on how to read the standards.
http://www.nextgenscience.org/how-to-read-the-standards
Bozeman Science Next Generation Science Standards
Videos from Bozeman Science on lessons connected to the Next Generation Science Standards. Teachers can click on topics for instructional videos matching NGSS topics. These videos can be used in classroom instruction or as integral components in flipped lessons.
http://www.bozemanscience.com/next-generation-science-standards/
EQuIP Quality Review Process
This Equip Rubric is for the review of math lessons and units aligned to the CCSS math standards. Currently there are many resources available with a CCSS sticker attached, yet very few of these resources are actually aligned. As an educator it can be difficult to know if a resource is aligned. The Equip rubric provides an easy to use rubric for educators to use in selecting and developing resources and lessons aligned to the CCSS.
http://www.achieve.org/files/EQuIPMathV5electronicfeedbackresponse061713e.pdf
Educators Evaluating Quality Instructional Products (EQuIP)
This is a video on how to use the Equip Rubric resource. Scroll to the bottom of page and click on tab labeled "Equip Training Materials."
http://www.achieve.org/EQuIP