By Cindy Workosky
Posted on 2017-05-24
At the recent NSTA National Conference in Los Angeles, three-dimensional learning was, of course, a major topic of discussion. When those discussions focus on classroom instruction, though, the crosscutting concepts are often the forgotten dimension. Some educators argue that the crosscutting concepts should develop in students’ minds organically, and that it’s enough for a teacher to simply guide students to reflect on a learning experience to find connections to those concepts. Other educators see the value in making the crosscutting concepts more explicit for students, but they find it difficult to do so. We fell into this second camp.
We realized the crosscutting concepts are valuable tools for helping students develop, understand, and connect disciplinary core ideas and practices across learning experiences. However, we wondered how we could help students make these connections in effective ways. We started to see the answer to that question after reviewing the plant growth and gas exchange unit developed at Michigan State University (MSU). The matter and energy process tool used in that unit provides explicit scaffolding for students as they apply the Energy and Matter crosscutting concept to phenomena ranging from a drying sponge to a growing tree. This scaffold helps students see the structure of the crosscutting concept, and it forces them to connect general, abstract ideas about matter and energy with specific, concrete phenomena. Once we considered this tool, we envisioned ways to help students develop their ability to apply the crosscutting concepts when analyzing phenomena.
With this model in mind, we developed a series of graphic organizers (available as Google Slides) that scaffold each of the seven crosscutting concepts for middle and high school students. As we did this, we wanted to be sure to address the most important aspects of each concept. To accomplish this, we referred extensively to the explanations of each crosscutting concept in the Framework for K–12 Science Education (ch. 4, pp. 83–102) and to the grade- band progressions on the NGSS@NSTA Hub.
Crosscutting Concepts Progressions
For example, the overall description for Cause and Effect on the Hub states, “deciphering causal relationships, and the mechanisms by which they are mediated, is a major activity of science and engineering.” As a result, the mechanism linking the two events in a cause-effect relationship is a central feature of our Cause and Effect graphic organizer.
As you review the remaining graphic organizers, you will see that we adapted MSU’s Matter and Energy Process Tool only slightly. You’ll also notice eight graphic organizers, one more than the seven crosscutting concepts. We believe Scale, Proportion, and Quantity had two key aspects that could not both be represented in a single graphic organizer. The Scale organizer is actually inspired by another tool from the same MSU unit.
You will also see that each graphic organizer prompts students to apply the crosscutting concept to a specific phenomenon. We want students to think not in generalities, such as how the structure of cell organelles promotes the cell’s function, but rather in more specifically grounded ideas, such as why a person with a mitochondrial disease experiences chronic fatigue.
Finally, you’ll see considerable overlap across the graphic organizers, particularly regarding the role of evidence in supporting claims. This reinforces the idea that the crosscutting concepts are not isolated ideas, but interrelated lenses that scientists and engineers use to understand and analyze phenomena and problems.
What does this look like in the classroom? Teachers have used the graphic organizers in scenarios ranging from students analyzing the cause and mechanism of swarming locusts after reading an article about the phenomenon to using a modified version of the Matter and Energy graphic organizer to analyze changes in matter that occurred during a reaction in a bag activity.
One of our favorite uses is in a storyline we developed to investigate the causes of land and sea breezes at the beach. After viewing a video of a flag at the beach blowing in different directions during the day and night, students engage in a series of investigations to help them understand the factors contributing to this phenomenon.
Students then use the Cause and Effect graphic organizer to make sense of how these factors (differential heating of land and water, air pressure, convection, and so on) cause the flag to blow in different directions at different times. The key is that students are actively using the graphic organizer to help them comprehend the phenomenon. They are not simply taking notes about the phenomenon or about the general ideas of the crosscutting concept.
We encourage you to try out these graphic organizers, and we hope they will help you make the crosscutting concepts more explicit and more useful for your students. We hope your students will see the graphic organizers and the crosscutting concepts themselves as thinking tools that will help them make sense of the world around them and connect various phenomena and core ideas. As you use these resources with your students, we would love to hear about your experiences and welcome your feedback.
Jeremy Peacock
Jeremy Peacock, Ed.D., is Director of 6-12 Science at Northeast Georgia Regional Education Service Agency in Winterville, Georgia, and an NGSS@NSTA Curator. He is also a past President of the Georgia Science Teachers Association and a former environmental scientist and high school biology teacher. He is currently focused on supporting Georgia teachers in implementing their new state-developed three-dimensional science standards.
Amy Peacock
Amy Peacock, Ph.D., is the K-12 Science Content Coach in the Clarke County School District in Athens, Georgia, and the outgoing President of the Georgia Science Supervisors Association. She is a former food scientist and high school chemistry teacher. She provides professional learning, coaching, and support for science teachers in her district.
The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.
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At the recent NSTA National Conference in Los Angeles, three-dimensional learning was, of course, a major topic of discussion. When those discussions focus on classroom instruction, though, the crosscutting concepts are often the forgotten dimension. Some educators argue that the crosscutting concepts should develop in students’ minds organically, and that it’s enough for a teacher to simply guide students to reflect on a learning experience to find connections to those concepts.
By Cindy Workosky
Posted on 2017-05-24
At the core of a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) classroom is the sequence of exposing students to an interesting natural phenomenon, having students generate questions about the phenomenon, investigating student questions, then creating a scientific model to explain the phenomenon. Regardless of the practice defined in the performance expectation, this triad of phenomenon, questioning, and modeling should be incorporated into most NGSS lesson sequences.
One of the fifth-grade performance expectations (5-ESS1-1) is about supporting an argument concerning the apparent brightness of stars with respect to the stars’ distance from Earth. Before students can support an argument, they need to explore the nature of light and determine what happens to light as it travels through the universe. Students begin by viewing photographs of the night sky and generating questions. The following are examples of student-generated questions:
I post many of these questions on the wall, and we focus on certain groups of questions as we proceed through the sequence of lessons. We take the questions about differences in stars with respect to size and brightness and turn them into questions we can investigate. For these lessons, we decided on this question: How is the brightness of light affected by the distance from the source of light?
Student groups were given access to a darkened room and provided with flashlights, meter sticks, and black paper and white paper. They chose their own method to find an answer to the question.
After the investigation, they were asked to use pictures and words to document their results. In this case, they used the left side of the piece of paper and labeled the right side with “The Real World,” with the instruction that this would be completed later. This is an example of student work.
After student groups generated initial explanations of their results, we critiqued and revised them. This was a new skill for my fifth graders, so we conducted this process as a group. I projected images of the students’ work and asked them to decide on one suggestion that would improve the explanation and one suggestion they could use to improve their own explanation. The class discussion included the following:
The main part of discussion revolved around the “light beam” and what must be happening for the circle of light to get both bigger and dimmer. Students were given the opportunity to modify or supplement their diagram to incorporate additional information. The biggest change in most of the explanations was the addition of the light beam. Students discovered that it must spread out more as it moves away from the source. Many student groups returned to the flashlights to test and verify their ideas about how the light travelled as it left the source.
The next step was to have students transfer the results of their investigation. Students were supplied with flashlights and globes to determine how this happens in the real world. Students documented their understanding of the real world. Here are some examples:
After generating these real-world explanations, we came together again to examine images and brainstorm ideas for making them more accurate. The discussion focused on the question of whether the Sun is actually much bigger than other stars. Students realized that the Sun looks big because it is close, but it is actually not a big star.
As a final step in the process of understanding why closer stars look brighter, individual students were asked to share their final thoughts about this topic. Students showed varying levels of understanding about the topic, but most demonstrated they understood that the light from a distant object spreads out and therefore appears dimmer than the light from a closer source.
Kathy Gill
Kathy Gill is a science specialist at Willett Elementary School in Davis, California. She guides fourth- and fifth-grade students in exploring and explaining interesting scientific phenomena.
The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.
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At the core of a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) classroom is the sequence of exposing students to an interesting natural phenomenon, having students generate questions about the phenomenon, investigating student questions, then creating a scientific model to explain the phenomenon. Regardless of the practice defined in the performance expectation, this triad of phenomenon, questioning, and modeling should be incorporated into most NGSS lesson sequences.
By Cindy Workosky
Posted on 2017-05-24
Four years ago, I moved from teaching middle school science to teaching grades 2–5 STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics) labs. One of the biggest challenges I faced was limited lab time in our elementary school. Because we shared instructional time with social studies, I was only able to meet with students for two 40-minute periods a week for half the year.
I had many other challenges as well. I had to adjust my planning for younger students, and learn to work effectively with co-teachers whose main focus was English language arts (ELA) and mathematics. Elementary science had been taught from dog-eared textbooks that were older than the students we were teaching, and teachers had relied heavily on worksheets and recall assessments. I knew three-dimensional instruction—as promoted in A Framework for K–12 Science Education (Framework) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)—presented a daunting paradigm shift for teachers, but I was confident the new standards would yield significant benefits for student engagement and learning.
I think that using the three dimensions helps me maximize student learning. I plan lab investigations, problem-based learning projects, and engineering design challenges to help students apply and extend their classroom learning as they engage in science and engineering practices to solve problems. Crosscutting concepts, in particular, provide an essential, highly useful schema for intentional three-dimensional planning because they offer a big-picture perspective that helps me plan instruction with recurring themes as students’ progress through elementary science. According to the Framework, “Explicit reference to the concepts, as well as their emergence in multiple disciplinary contexts, can help students develop a cumulative, coherent, and usable understanding of science and engineering.”
Crosscutting concepts make intuitive sense to my youngest students, especially the concept of structure and function. For example, my second-grade unit on interdependent relationships in ecosystems features a modeling project to address 2-LS2-2, “Develop a simple model that mimics the function of an animal in dispersing seeds or pollinating plants.” We begin by viewing a video of a dog running through a field, collecting burrs on its coat, then shaking them off. I ask students if they have ever walked through the woods or a field and found burrs stuck to their socks or shoes. I inquire, “How do you think the burr sticks to your socks?”
We examine seeds with hand lenses and a 3D microscope, and view online images of seeds with hooks and spikes. I then ask why students think a plant would produce seeds with hook and spike structures. (Note: Before this lab lesson, students had explored seed dispersal by wind and water, and had discussed the importance of seeds traveling away from their parent plant for greater access to resources like water, sunlight, and space for their roots to spread.)
Students observe that the hooks help the seed get carried to a new spot where it can have a better chance of growing, and I introduce the term function. Function is the structure’s job: how it works to help the plant. We also examine examples of seeds surrounded by fruit and discuss how fruit is a structure that functions to attract an animal, helping a seed get dispersed. Of course, this produces much hilarity in the room as students realize how the seed eventually gets deposited in a new location, accompanied by a useful helping of fertilizer.
Squirrel with cheek pouch structures that function to carry nuts
I introduce an engineering design challenge: “Use the engineering design process to design, construct, evaluate, and present a simple model that mimics the function of an animal in dispersing a plant’s seeds. Your model must show the animal and seed structures (parts) and show how they function (work) to make seed dispersal possible.”
Bird disperses berry seeds through a drinking straw digestive tube
Students explore structure and function in third grade as they design a desert plant with adaptations to absorb and store water during a flash flood and to prevent water loss that occurs through evaporation. Before designing their plant, teams test various materials for speed of water absorption and structural integrity when wet.
Students wrapped their plant’s above ground structures in waxed paper or plastic wrap to function to prevent evaporation.
Data dashboard
Our Primary School’s Data Dashboard is posted prominently on a cafeteria wall. Each grade is responsible for recording daily precipitation (grade 2), hours of daylight (grade 1), and high and low temperatures (kindergarten). Teachers bring their students to the cafeteria with clipboards to ask questions and look for patterns, a crosscutting concept. Opportunities abound for discussing additional crosscutting concepts at our Data Dashboard, such as cause and effect and stability and change.
Recently, I participated in a Twitter chat on crosscutting concepts #elngsschat, one of my favorite Twitter chats for sharing ideas for elementary science teaching. Participants are enthusiastic, passionate science educators, eager to share their ideas, successes, and failures. Elementary science teachers can use this chat and hashtag to build a supportive PLN—especially helpful if you teach in a small district with limited science specialist teaching staff. As we continue to progress in our NGSS implementation journey, I look forward to hearing other educators’ experiences with teaching crosscutting concepts at all grade levels.
Beth Topinka
Beth Topinka is the S.T.E.A.M. lab teacher for grades 2–5 at Millstone Township School District in central New Jersey. She’s a vocal advocate for interdisciplinary, problem-based learning, and loves to create and share engaging 3D investigations and engineering challenges. She is a Science Friday Educator Collaborator, and was recently named a Science Channel Science Superhero. Topinka was selected as a state finalist for the 2016 Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.
The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.
Future NSTA Conferences
National Conference
Follow NSTA
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Four years ago, I moved from teaching middle school science to teaching grades 2–5 STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics) labs. One of the biggest challenges I faced was limited lab time in our elementary school. Because we shared instructional time with social studies, I was only able to meet with students for two 40-minute periods a week for half the year.
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