I had eagerly anticipated a session at the NSTA National Conference in Atlanta called How Do We Make NGSS Storylines Work by Pushing Students to Go Deeper?—presented by Michael Novak and Brian Reiser—and I was not alone: Attendees filled the room to overflowing. I was fortunate to have worked with Novak and Reiser when I was a science coordinator in Vermont, and I was excited to learn more at their session. I was not disappointed. My understanding of how storylines can deepen student understanding of science continues to grow, and this session was valuable because it further enhanced my knowledge.

Teachers are starving for quality resources, and Novak and Reiser inspired them to write their own 3-D lessons and suggested resources for doing so. They began with the basics of coherent storylines and how they differ from what most of us have always done: In the past, teachers just chose their favorite activities, which didn’t always help students make sense of the concept. Coherent storylines have a certain flow and a purpose for each learning experience.

The presenters described an interesting tool that included five questions they use to develop storylines for NGSS learning, and provided examples. I could hear many oohs and ahs around the room, and attendees asking one another questions and reflecting on their instructional approaches and how they could change.

The slide below is my favorite because it shows empathy for the stages where many educators are in their own transition to NGSS and encourages a can-do attitude. (download all the slides here)

Notice that text on the left of the slide states “Model so far.” This language encourages educators to understand that taking a risk is okay: take a risk and try it. It is desirable to use this model and maybe make it even better.

I learned a new word in NGSS science thinking at this session: —problematizing. I believe that when we are problematizing, we are asking students to apply their learning to a new and different situation. By doing so, we give them an opportunity to bolster their understanding and/or ask new questions. 

Fellow NGSS Squadsters Liza Rickey and Meg Richards also shared some insights about the session.

Richards had a different view of what problematizing is. It’s determining how to push students to dig deeper, to want to know more.

Rickey was also intrigued by the concept of problematizing and notes that sometimes it’s appropriate to introduce a new phenomenon or question to students who might not have been on driving question board. I agree. Helping students do this might be as simple as asking them for other examples of the phenomenon in their lives, while at other times, teachers might need to introduce a similar situation to help students comprehend the ideas. By doing this, students will think beyond the phenomena themselves and begin to realize why this concept is important beyond the classroom.

After talking with Richards, it was obvious to me that her biggest revelation was the power of student questions. She explained, “I knew wonder drove investigation, but I never thought about it also being the driver of the actual instruction of materials as well (i.e., kids using a microscope). I’m interested in seeing this in action, and even more excited to try it out myself.”

One of my epiphanies is recognizing that yes, students need to know how to use the tools of science to move their learning forward, but that can be accomplished by fostering and eliciting student questions about the tool rather than the teacher providing the answers as had been done in the past.

It’s important to ask questions as we engage in the productive struggle of learning this new way of thinking about science instruction. Novak and Reiser modeled that and invited participants to ask their own questions. Richards had many. The following is a visualization of her questions as a driving question board, with a driving question and many investigable questions that support it.

Her questions

“How can I/we start storylining in our classrooms efficiently and effectively?”

• In having student questions drive investigation, what happens to the questions that aren’t answered?
• How does one ensure students still feel valued?
• What do you do with the disengaged kiddo who “has no questions”?
• How does differentiation work in this model, and what does the grade book (ick!) look like?
• How do you involve and educate parents about the shifting methodology of instruction?
• How can we help students with effective instruction while also preparing them for the current inevitable college instructional strategies?

Do you see it the way I do? Maybe your visualization is different. Please share your thoughts about this.

I want to thank Liza Rickey and Meg Richards for their thoughtful responses to my question.

I have been developing NGSS curriculum for a while now, but Novak’s and Reiser’s work continues to advance my thinking. I now have a few questions of my own. How much time does it take to build storylines this way? How much time during the school day should be allocated for this type of learning?

I welcome your thoughts, ideas, and questions about this topic. Please share in the comment section below.

Kathy Renfrew is field editor of the Next Gen Navigator. She is a science specialist and instructional coach as well as an NGSS@NSTA curator and online adviser in the NSTA Learning Center. She is a regular science blogger for The Teaching Channel and Middleweb. You can always find her seeking out new learning on Twitter and other social media. Her Twitter handle is @krsciencelady. Kathy previously taught grades 4 through 6 in a self-contained classroom for more than 30 years. She served as a state science supervisor in Vermont for eight years. She is a National Board Certified Teacher and a 2000 recipient of the elementary Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Teaching. 

This article was featured in the April issue of Next Gen Navigator, a monthly e-newsletter from NSTA delivering information, insights, resources, and professional learning opportunities for science educators by science educators on the Next Generation Science Standards and three-dimensional instruction. Click here to read more from the April issue. Click here to sign up to receive the Navigator every month.

Visit NSTA’s NGSS@NSTA Hub for hundreds of vetted classroom resources, professional learning opportunities, publications, ebooks and more; connect with your teacher colleagues on the NGSS listservs (members can sign up here); and join us for discussions around NGSS at an upcoming conference.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

Future NSTA Conferences

2018 STEM Forum & Expo

• Philadelphia July 11–13

Dive into Three-Dimensional Instruction Workshop

• Philadelphia, July 14–15

2018 Area Conferences

• Reno, October 11–13
• National Harbor (MD), November 15–17
• Charlotte, Nov. 29-Dec. 1

2019 National Conference

• St. Louis, April 11-14, 2019

Follow NSTA

The crosscutting concepts have great potential to help students connect their learning across grade levels and science disciplines, but they can easily become the forgotten “third dimension.” Last May, we wrote about developing a set of graphic organizers that help make the crosscutting concepts explicit for students and scaffold their thinking as students apply the crosscutting concepts to scientific phenomena. At the recent NSTA National Conference in Atlanta, we were excited to share the experiences of middle school teachers who piloted the graphic organizers with their students. You can find our presentation materials on the Conferences section of NSTA’s website (search any of our last names), or click here. In the following paragraphs, each teacher shares a brief reflection on her experience.

Sixth-Grade Earth Science—Ducks Overboard (Systems and System Models) by Jessica Caldwell.

I have been teaching science for seven years in rural northeast Georgia, which probably has more chickens than people. For my lesson about ocean currents, I incorporated the rubber ducks overboard phenomenon. In 1992, thousands of ducks went overboard in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and have been washing ashore worldwide. Students explored this by reading made-up text messages from around the world to get the longitude and latitude, then plotting where the ducks were found.

Next, we read about ocean currents and made an overlay of the currents on a transparency. This made it easy for students to see if the currents had affected where the ducks travelled. To include some crosscutting-concepts as the lesson concluded, we incorporated a graphic organizer about systems and system models. The system explored was the ocean system. With this organizer, students were able to make connections between the transfer of energy and how it made currents possible.

Using the graphic organizer really helped make this accessible for my students, not just a tool for the teacher. We continue to use these graphic organizers to pinpoint crosscutting concepts and synthesize our learning. I have also seen a change in my students writing of CER responses because they have solidified their ideas in the graphic organizer.

Seventh-Grade Life Science—The Great Oyster Mystery (Stability and Change) by Katrina Holt

The Great Oyster Mystery phenomenon required students to explore how an ecosystem’s balance can be affected by abiotic and biotic factors. Students investigated the phenomenon of oyster decline in Texas estuaries due to a change in salinity. They examined various graphs (oyster population, salinity of water, and precipitation) to determine what affected the stability of the estuary ecosystem. The crosscutting concept that relates most to this topic is stability and change.

The graphic organizers allow the students to “see” the crosscutting concept and how it applies to the phenomenon. Not only does using the graphic organizer assist the teacher in explicitly teaching the crosscutting concepts, it also helps the students understand the phenomenon better. Since the students were required to write a CER explaining how abiotic factors and biotic factors affect the ecosystem’s balance, the graphic organizer also worked as a pre-writing activity that allowed them to organize the important evidence they found.

Eighth-Grade Physical Science—Food Coloring Frenzy (Cause and Effect) by Meganne Skinner

In the eighth-grade content, we used the cause-and-effect graphic organizer to show how temperature affects particle movement. Students were able to see that something was happening “under the surface” of the water, ice water, and boiling water that helped determine how quickly food coloring was dispersed throughout each beaker of water. From this activity and the use of the graphic organizer, I was able to grasp student thinking and reasoning about the idea of “cause and effect” and how that related to particle motion. We did this together as a class the first time, and by the time we returned to the graphic organizer later in the year, they understood how to think more deeply about the content and the crosscutting concepts!

Have you tried any of the graphic organizers in your classroom?

We heard from a couple of our session participants that they had used the graphic organizers in their classrooms or in professional learning. If you have tried our graphic organizers, we would love to hear your feedback. If you have used other strategies to support your students in understanding and using the crosscutting concepts, we would love to hear about those, too.  Please comment on this blog post with your ideas and insights.

Authors

• Amy Peacock is K–8 Science Curriculum Coordinator for the Clarke County School District in Athens, Georgia.
• Jeremy Peacock is the Director of 6–12 Science at Northeast Georgia Regional Education Service Agency in Winterville, Georgia.
• Jessica Caldwell teaches sixth-grade Earth science at Oglethorpe County Middle School in Crawford, Georgia.
• Katrina Holt teaches seventh-grade life science at Commerce Middle School in Commerce, Georgia
• Meganne Skinner teaches eighth-grade physical science at Hilsman Middle School in Athens, Georgia.

This article was featured in the April issue of Next Gen Navigator, a monthly e-newsletter from NSTA delivering information, insights, resources, and professional learning opportunities for science educators by science educators on the Next Generation Science Standards and three-dimensional instruction.  Click here to read more from the April issue. Click here to sign up to receive the Navigator every month.

Visit NSTA’s NGSS@NSTA Hub for hundreds of vetted classroom resources, professional learning opportunities, publications, ebooks and more; connect with your teacher colleagues on the NGSS listservs (members can sign up here); and join us for discussions around NGSS at an upcoming conference.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

Future NSTA Conferences

2018 STEM Forum & Expo

• Philadelphia July 11–13

Dive into Three-Dimensional Instruction Workshop

• Philadelphia, July 14–15

2018 Area Conferences

• Reno, October 11–13
• National Harbor (MD), November 15–17
• Charlotte, Nov. 29-Dec. 1

2019 National Conference

• St. Louis, April 11-14, 2019

Follow NSTA

I think the best part of attending NSTA’s national conferences is having the opportunity to learn so much from every person you meet. The sheer number of so many likeminded educators in one place can seem overwhelming, but the opportunity to learn from them all is one that can’t be missed.

After leaving the 2017 NSTA National Conference in Los Angeles with so many strategies to implement in my classroom, I decided to share about the new strategies I had incorporated in my classroom. I chose to discuss my use of historical primary sources in the science classroom; specifically, how they could be used as anchoring phenomena in an NGSS classroom.

My session, Using Primary Sources as Anchoring Phenomena, was inspired by my participation in the Library of Congress (LOC) Summer Teacher Institute in 2015. The LOC suggests using primary sources in education because they engage students, develop their critical-thinking skills, and help them construct knowledge. Since attending the Summer Teacher Institute, I have become much more familiar with the NGSS.

The connections between the benefits of using primary sources and the vision of science education outlined in the National Research Council’s A Framework for K–12 Science Education have resonated with me. For example, the LOC says engaging students with primary sources helps them “construct knowledge as they form reasoned conclusions, base their conclusions on evidence, and connect primary sources to the context in which they were created, synthesizing information from multiple sources.” These ideas closely align with the elements of the Science and Engineering Practices, Engaging in Argument from Evidenceand Constructing Explanations.

When using primary sources in my own classroom, I usually found that students were engaged in determining what the documents showed, and I heard students say repeatedly that they had never done anything like this in a science classroom. When I began my transition to a NGSS classroom, it was easy to see that historical primary sources could still play a role in instruction.

When my conference session began, attendees first chose a primary source from a table filled with images, manuscripts, and models. When I asked if anybody would share why they chose a particular image, one teacher displayed the image of Mendeleev’s First Periodic Table and said something like “This interested me because I think it is the first periodic table, and I really love chemistry.” Another teacher displayed an image of a sideways house with a tree through it, and related how she had just witnessed this happening to a house in her area after a tornado hit it. It became instantly clear to the group that one benefit of using primary sources is the strong personal connection with the content that can be established.

Mendeleev’s first periodic table

After our initial discussion, we reviewed some basic definitions of primary sources, secondary sources, and the terms of copyright and fair use in educational settings, which are necessary when discussing the use of primary sources in the classroom. We also explored the Primary Source Analysis Tool, created by the LOC as a way to analyze and record ideas about a primary source being explored.

We then focused on how we could use primary sources as anchoring phenomena. We defined phenomena as “observable events that occur in the universe and that we can use our science knowledge to explain or predict,” the definition from the resource Using Phenomena in NGSS-Designed Lessons and Units. Whenever we define phenomena in this way, I confess I always wonder how primary sources can count as phenomena: After all, they are not observable events; they’re old documents or images!

While primary sources aren’t directly observable, natural events, they are tools that help us witness natural phenomena that may not be observable otherwise. They may help us observe phenomena from the past, as do images of rivers that have changed course over time. Or they may help us witness phenomena that are too large or small to see directly.

To explore this idea, teachers in my session used primary sources to develop questions that could be used to create a driving question board in a middle school Earth science class. They began by independently observing, analyzing, and asking questions about a historical model of the solar system. Then we jigsawed the various images, shared our observations and reflections, and developed new questions related to the set of primary sources. The teachers engaged in lively discussion as they tried to determine which chronological and/or ideological order the images belonged in. Finally, I asked them to choose one of their questions to share with the group that they thought would best help answer our driving questions: “Has the movement of bodies in the solar system changed over time? Why have the models of the solar system changed over time?” Their questions ranged from “What evidence did the astronomers have to create their model?” and “What changes in technology helped provide evidence?” to specific questions about what the different parts of the models represented.

Ptolemaic Concept of the Universe

Copernicus’ Sun-Centered Model of the Cosmos

The final moments were devoted to exploring how student understanding of the Nature of Science can be supported through the use of primary sources. Appendix H of NGSS outlines eight understandings of the Nature of Science, with grade-banded elements associated with each. While we can establish understandings of the Nature of Science in many ways throughout instruction, one method involves explicit reflection on those understandings by using case studies from the history of science.

Despite technical difficulties with my computer and missing my partner presenter, I’m happy I had the opportunity to share some ideas from my classroom experience with other teachers. My session resources can be found at tinyurl.com/PSNSTA18.

I would love to hear your feedback.

• How have you used primary sources in your classroom? 
• What resources have you used to find primary sources?
• Do you have any ideas of phenomena that can be represented using historical primary sources?

Comment below and I’ll be sure to respond.

References

(1513) An illustration of the Ptolemaic concept of the universe showing the earth in the center. , 1513. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2007681147.

Copernicus, N. (1543) Nicolai Copernici Torinensis De revolvtionibvs orbium cœlestium, libri VI. Habes in hoc opere iam recens nato, & ædito, studiose lector, motus stellarum, tam fixarum, quàm erraticarum, cum ex ueteribus tum etiam ex recentibus obseruationibus restitutos: & nouis insuper ac admirabilibus hypothesibus ornatos. Habes etiam tabulas expeditissimas, ex quibus eosdem ad quoduis tempus quàm facillime caculare poteris. Igitur eme, lege, fruere. Line in Greek. Norimbergæ, apud Ioh. Petreium. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/46031925.

Mendeleyev, D. I. (1869) First Periodic Table of Chemical Elements Demonstrating the Periodic Law. Russia, 1869. [Published] [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/92517587.

National Research Council. 2012. A Framework for K–12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/13165.

Why Use Primary Sources? Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/whyuse.html.

Brianna Reilly is a high school biology teacher at Hightstown High School in New Jersey’s East Windsor Regional School District. Outside of the classroom, Reilly is a member of Achieve, Inc.’s Science Peer Review Panel and one of NSTA’s Professional Learning Facilitators. She has been honored with NSTA’s 2017 Maitland P. Simmons Memorial Award. Reilly earned her B.S. in biology from The College of New Jersey, and will complete her M.S. in science education this summer at Montana State University. Follow her on Twitter: @MsB_Reilly.

This article was featured in the April issue of Next Gen Navigator, a monthly e-newsletter from NSTA delivering information, insights, resources, and professional learning opportunities for science educators by science educators on the Next Generation Science Standards and three-dimensional instruction.  Click here to read more from the April issue. Click here to sign up to receive the Navigator every month.

Visit NSTA’s NGSS@NSTA Hub for hundreds of vetted classroom resources, professional learning opportunities, publications, ebooks and more; connect with your teacher colleagues on the NGSS listservs (members can sign up here); and join us for discussions around NGSS at an upcoming conference.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

Future NSTA Conferences

2018 STEM Forum & Expo

• Philadelphia July 11–13

Dive into Three-Dimensional Instruction Workshop

• Philadelphia, July 14–15

2018 Area Conferences

• Reno, October 11–13
• National Harbor (MD), November 15–17
• Charlotte, Nov. 29-Dec. 1

2019 National Conference

• St. Louis, April 11-14, 2019

Follow NSTA

At the NSTA National Conference in Atlanta, I was honored to give the Mary C. McCurdy lecture on young children and their natural curiosity about how the world works. Anyone who has ever spent time with them knows they are born scientists who are curious about the natural world and continuously question, test, and try to make sense of it. Research studies bear this out: “All children bring basic reasoning skills, knowledge of the natural world, and curiosity, which can be built on to achieve proficiency in science” (see Taking Science to School, NRC 2007).

Why, then, do young people become so disinterested in science, often by the time they reach middle school? Even Albert Einstein observed, “It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” Who am I to correct Einstein, but this statement could be modified to say it’s a miracle when curiosity survives formal education. How then do we preserve children’s natural sense of wonder in an era of new standards and change in science education?

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and the Framework on which they are based, describe an ambitious vision for students’ science learning. Three-dimensional science learning–learning core ideas and crosscutting concepts by engaging in scientific and engineering practices–has major implications for traditional curriculum, instruction, and assessment in science. Because NGSS is intended to reflect scientists’ and engineers’ authentic work, it fundamentally serves as a vehicle for promoting curiosity about phenomena. Focusing on phenomena isn’t merely a way to generate interest and excitement, it also should elicit students’ wonderings in ways that produce an overarching question to guide investigation; create a persistent need to explain/understand; and require sustained investigation (STEM Teaching Tool #28). In other words, an emphasis on phenomena and 3-D learning should by their very nature cultivate curiosity about how the world works.

In this post, I identify two common practices in elementary school science that interfere with children’s curiosity, coupled with instructional practices that nurture wonder. As you read, I encourage you to reflect on your own science teaching and share the work you do to nurture children’s innate curiosity about the natural world.

Shifts in Science Teaching Practices That Support Wonder

It is commonplace in many school settings to pre-teach vocabulary before engaging in investigations and sensemaking. I have referred to this as “the vocabulary dilemma.” As I worked closely with teacher colleagues, I observed that teaching vocabulary by defining terms appears to stem from traditional ELA instruction and the pressures of high-stakes testing. The practice works against curiosity by focusing on pre-defined terms, which are decontextualized, and represents science as little more than a static body of facts. When taught this way, the focus is on reading, writing, speaking, and listening “about” science.

So what is the alternative? Tying words to meaning requires engaging with and investigating phenomena while accepting “kid talk” until the point in the sensemaking process that children have enough experiences and emerging understanding of the core idea(s) that it makes sense to introduce the scientific term(s). For example, rather than defining force at the beginning of a unit, allow children to explore a variety of forces. Resist introducing the term until they have enough experiences to make the connection between the word and its meaning in context.

This may sound simple, but resisting the urge to explain and define vocabulary during the act of teaching requires intentional planning for opportunities for children to participate in sensemaking: reading, writing, speaking, and listening “for” science (NRC 2014). Remember that NGSS implementation requires a phenomena-based context in which students themselves are interested and motivated to investigate, explain, and understand.

My next example of common practices that inhibit children’s natural curiosity may surprise you. It’s hands-on activities, something a teacher colleague calls “snacks and crafts” science. It is deceiving because when kids are doing activities, they appear to be engaged and having fun. So how does “activity-mania” counteract a sense of wonder? When taught in this way, science may indeed be exciting; however, an activity focus is often driven by science topics or themes and does not build toward a coherent science content storyline (Reiser 2013).

Additionally, collections of fun activities rarely involve students in scientific practices, such as modeling, arguing from evidence, and constructing explanations. Kids may find out “about” cool science facts or see “flash bang” demonstrations, but they are not participating productively in scientific discourse and practices that are essential for sensemaking. So children’s excitement about activities tend to wane as the activity concludes instead of persisting across a unit of study, driven by students’ need to explain and understand some aspect of how the world works.

As we progress in the hard work of NGSS implementation, it is important to consider that we have all been rendered novices in some way by the ambitious new vision for students’ science learning. In the end, however, teachers are the ones left to enact the instructional practices that support this vision, often in the isolation of our own classrooms. Change requires us to be curious, not only about the NGSS, but also about how children learn and how our instructional practices impact their learning.

Additionally, we must be willing to share what we find as we engage in inquiry into science teaching and learning with others. In her book A Sense of Wonder, marine biologist and conservationist Rachel Carson describes her wish for every child as an indestructible sense of wonder that lasts a lifetime and protects from the disenchantment that comes with age. My wish for you as an educator is that you, too, will never lose your sense of wonder.

I welcome feedback on your experiences with making these challenging shifts away from pre-teaching vocabulary and activity-mania to tying science words to meaning, and using phenomena to promote coherence across investigations. Please comment below…

Carla Zembal-Saul is a professor of science education and the Kahn Professor of STEM Education at Penn State University. A former middle school science teacher with a background in biology, she is co-author of the book What’s Your Evidence? Engaging K–5 Students in Constructing Explanations in Science. Zembal-Saul’s research investigates instructional practices and tools that support preservice and practicing elementary teachers in engaging children productively in scientific practices and discourse with an emphasis on sensemaking about natural phenomena. She is deeply invested in practitioner inquiry and video analysis of practice as mechanisms for advancing teacher learning and development. In 2015, Zembal-Saul was recognized as a NSTA Fellow, and she served on the National Academies of Sciences consensus panel that produced the report, Science Teachers’ Learning: Enhancing Opportunities, Creating Supportive Contexts.

This article was featured in the April issue of Next Gen Navigator, a monthly e-newsletter from NSTA delivering information, insights, resources, and professional learning opportunities for science educators by science educators on the Next Generation Science Standards and three-dimensional instruction. Click here to access other articles from the April issue. Click here to read more in the April issue. Click here to sign up to receive the Navigator every month.

Visit NSTA’s NGSS@NSTA Hub for hundreds of vetted classroom resources, professional learning opportunities, publications, ebooks and more; connect with your teacher colleagues on the NGSS listservs (members can sign up here); and join us for discussions around NGSS at an upcoming conference.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

Future NSTA Conferences

2018 STEM Forum & Expo

• Philadelphia July 11–13

Dive into Three-Dimensional Instruction Workshop

• Philadelphia, July 14–15

2018 Area Conferences

• Reno, October 11–13
• National Harbor (MD), November 15–17
• Charlotte, Nov. 29-Dec. 1

2019 National Conference

• St. Louis, April 11-14, 2019

Follow NSTA