When I was first introduced to the NGSS curriculum in the spring of 2013, I wasn't a fan. I couldn't imagine teaching chemistry without so many of the important content pieces that aren't mentioned anywhere in the DCIs. The assessment boundaries seemed extremely basic, and the amount of stuff to cover in a chemistry class pales in comparison to what should be covered in a biology course when first looking at NGSS. The following year I taught myself a lot about navigating the NGSS curriculum, but it wasn't until my current department worked with Paul Andersen that I really bought into it and saw it for what it is. He had been working with my team for a year before I became a member, but my background in NGSS helped me get up to speed quickly.
In the first meeting, Paul showed us a new and improved mystery tube. If you haven't seen the original, here it is. Last year we used it as our day one activity to get the kids thinking about being able to figure out what we can't see, and communicate our ideas through models. Unfortunately, this "mystery" tube is all over the internet, and can no longer be used. When Paul finished, all of us wanted to know how the new mystery tube works, and he wouldn't. This was a valuable lesson for me as an educator. How many times do we show our kids something and then immediately tell them how it works, how to solve it, or give them scaffolded instructions to avoid failure and risks? That was the kind of teacher I was. It was at this point that I bought into NGSS. The quote that resonated with me, and still does is:
LP1. The students will ask questions about the cause of the phenomenon observed.
In the first meeting, Paul showed us a new and improved mystery tube. If you haven't seen the original, here it is. Last year we used it as our day one activity to get the kids thinking about being able to figure out what we can't see, and communicate our ideas through models. Unfortunately, this "mystery" tube is all over the internet, and can no longer be used. When Paul finished, all of us wanted to know how the new mystery tube works, and he wouldn't. This was a valuable lesson for me as an educator. How many times do we show our kids something and then immediately tell them how it works, how to solve it, or give them scaffolded instructions to avoid failure and risks? That was the kind of teacher I was. It was at this point that I bought into NGSS. The quote that resonated with me, and still does is:
"Don't Kill the Wonder."That's exactly what we tend to do as science teachers when we start giving answers. So how do we build our lessons around this idea? How do we make sure that our kids leave our classes every day with more and more questions they're dying to find the answers to? After more philosophical discussions around the intentions of NGSS, we started building our units. We really didn't have any direction as to what to do. I was really adamant about making sure everything we do in the classroom is three-dimensional in nature. We also were very aware that the language of NGSS requires scaffolding up to a Performance Expectation. After a bit of discussion, this what my colleague and I started to do:
We have named it the VoBowPro. Feel free to use it as well. :)
We've cleaned up the process a bit with some help from Paul, but it's still the same thing we did during that first day of collaboration on unit building. There are two things to remember here.
1. EVERY SINGLE MINUTE of your class should be three-dimensional, not just the assessment questions. The reason I struggled with NGSS at first is because I was looking at it with a one-dimensional lens - CONTENT ONLY! If you try to use NGSS to just tell you the content to teach and the depth to teach it in, you'll be done by January, and you're not really using NGSS curriculum. You're fitting what you've always done into what content you're being told to teach.
This is an example of each scaffold of a lesson being 3D. If you look close enough, you'll see that there are three parts boxed in each LP (lesson progression). The blue box represents the SEP, the red box represents the DCI, and the green box represents the CCC. I'll explain this more later.
2. The SEPs are the driving force of all units. You've probably seen somewhere if you're an NGSS reader that these SEPs should be taught in a certain order. I'm extremely deliberate in this. In my last post, I talked about how to use the SEPs on day one. This is the order we should teach them for all units, because we should really be TEACHING science the same way we DO science.
These posters hang in my room and I point to them every single day. When I ask the students at the end of the day what they think we should do next class, they immediately look up and see what the next step is. By the end of the year, I hope this is second nature for them, as it is for scientists.
So here's the order:
1. Start with a phenomenon
2. Asking Questions & Defining Problems
3. Developing & Using Models
4. Planning & Carrying Out Investigations
5. Analyzing & Interpreting Data
6. Mathematics & Computational Thinking
7. Constructing Explanations & Designing Solutions
8. Engaging in Argumentation from Evidence
9. Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information
*note, Defining Problems & Designing Solutions are specifically for engineering standards.
This also makes agendas so easy!
So here's an example of a Performance Expectation that we've scaffolded out. This is our first unit of the year and includes to PEs. In a future post, I'll show you how we've laid out our chemistry class. We don't love the layout, but we're still experimenting with it.
First we need to start with the Performance Expectation. This is what we consider the end goal for the students by the end of the unit.
HS-PS 1-3: Plan and conduct and investigation to gather evidence to compare the structure of substances at the bulk scale to infer the strength of electrical forces between particles.
HS-PS 2-6: Communicate scientific and technical information about why the molecular-level structure is important in the functioning of designed materials.
The first step in planning out a unit is to determine the underlying concepts that are important in order to make sure the students find success. As you go through the lesson progressions, you can tick these off to make sure it's all covered. For this PE, we identified these concepts as important. Please note that these aren't necessarily content pieces, but rather just general concepts.
Concepts:
- Intermolecular vs. Intramolecular Forces (Bulk properties associated i.e.- melting point)
- Electronegativity
- Phases diagrams
- Coulombic Attraction
- -Shape -Polarity -Bond Strength -Etc.
- Electrostatic Forces
Next, we will start with the phenomenon and progress through the SEPs.
Phenomenon - Water Demo
LP1. The students will ask questions about the cause of the phenomenon observed.
LP2. The students will develop a model to show what they think causes the phenomenon to happen.
LP3. Students will design and carry out an investigation that will determine the melting point of various chosen household items by adding or removing energy from the system.
LP4. Students will analyze, aggregate and interpret data with their peers to identify patterns of melting point in various substances.
LP5. Students will write a CER to try to explain what causes some substances to melt at different temperatures.
**Note at this point we have only reached the Constructing Explanations SEP. We as a scientific community (my class) have not gained enough information to argue and evaluate information. In order to do this, we need to dig deeper into what's happening at the submicroscopic level. We'll start with another phenomenon and the entire SEP sequence over again at this point.
Phenomenon: Van deGraff Generator Demonstration
LP6: Students will generate questions about what causes the phenomenon.
LP7: Students will draw a model to show what they think causes the phenomenon.
LP8: Students will engage in a PhET simulation to develop a graphical model to show the relationships explained by Coulombic attraction.
(Not a learning progression) Students revisit and revise their previous two models and their CER and share out before moving on.
LP9. The students will engage in argumentation from evidence to explain what causes the two phenomena observed.
LP9: Students will obtain, evaluate and communicate information about why the molecular level structure is important for the functioning of various design materials.
Do any of you couple these two PEs together in one unit? How do you teach it?
For the next few curriculum posts, I'll be explaining strategies I use in my classroom for each of the SEPs. Stay tuned!
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