One of the big shifts in the NGSS is the integration of Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs) with Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs) and Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs). In other words, content is not taught in isolation: The teacher consciously includes at least one other dimension. Sounds easy, right? In actuality, that’s easier said than done. Planning lessons that intentionally incorporate multiple dimensions can be really challenging and time-consuming. A colleague and I used a multi-day activity to help high school chemistry students gain experience with designing a solution to a problem.

The context for the lab may be familiar because it’s a variation of an activity used by many chemistry teachers. We asked students who were learning about stoichiometric relationships, proportional reasoning, and chemical quantities in reactions (HS-PS1-6) to design a small-scale airbag using baking soda and vinegar. We modified the task in several ways to better reflect the practice we were targeting: designing a solution.

We added a silly, but somewhat realistic, frame to the lab by asking students to design an airbag for a stroller company that had received repeated customer complaints about the safety of their strollers. (This frame was based on an idea we heard during last year’s NSTA National Conference in Los Angeles.) More importantly, we sought to include key components of the engineering design process. We specified constraints, including weight limit, proper inflation level, and time needed to properly inflate the airbag, and emphasized that all materials had to be in the sealed bag, but remain unreacted until an “accident” happened.

We also gave students a budget and “charged” them for every item they used, including the baking soda and vinegar. This ensured that they were intentional about their process and not just guessing at the solution. We tracked each group’s expenses using a simple Google spreadsheet, and projected each group’s remaining budget on the main classroom screen and updated it in real time as groups purchased items.

We also included a process for students to patent their ideas by submitting their designs to the patent office (their teacher) for approval. This prevented them from copying other groups’ designs.

Students not only loved this activity, but also treated it very seriously. They were highly engaged in the engineering process, and consequently, the associated DCI. It was fun listening to the academic conversations happening spontaneously around the room.

Listening was our first line of formative assessment in this multi-day lab, but not the only one. To specifically assess students’ use and understanding of the practices in which they engaged, I developed a self-assessment tool. Students rated each of the eight practices on a 1-2-3 scale based on how engaged they felt in that practice.

Though I’d made many anecdotal formative assessments as I facilitated the lab, the metacognition, a crucial aspect of self-reflection, would’ve been missing if I hadn’t asked students to –assess themselves. All teachers agree that the person talking and/or writing is the one doing the learning, so this instruction caused students to pause and reflect more than if I’d simply pointed out what practices I thought they’d engaged in.

Students often surprised me by recounting conversations that indicated they’d engaged in practices I hadn’t witnessed as I monitored the lab. I didn’t anticipate, for example, that students would rate “Engaging in Argument From Evidence” as a 3 (indicating they’d used that practice significantly), but one group described a disagreement in the design process that forced them to gather and present evidence to convince other group members that a specific design would be the most effective.

Realistically, students won’t use all eight practices in any given lab. But by my including all eight on the self-assessment tool, it didn’t reveal what I expected they would use;it provided me with valuable information.

I especially appreciate that this self-assessment tool can be easily adapted for other classroom activities. The engineering portion at the end could be modified to reflect the specific activity, or even removed to generate a very generic, but useful, tool.

I’ve found that creating this document has helped me remember to slow down and give students time to process. Inevitably I feel crunched for time in the classroom and over the course of the year. While I try to be intentional about designing multi-dimensional lessons, this document also has helped me remember, when I worry about having enough time for the lesson, to slow down and give students time to process what they’re learning. Asking them to identify what they’re doing helps them connect the content to the real world and provides relevance for what they’re learning about.

Andrea Ames

Andrea Ames teaches science in Washington. After five years of teaching middle school science, she transitioned to high school science and has taught biology, chemistry, and AP Biology for three years. Ames holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s degree in teaching. She recently completed the University of Washington’s Teacher Leader certificate program and is a member of the Washington State Science Fellows network. 

This article was featured in the October 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 September issue on assessing three-dimensional learning. Click here to sign up to receive the Navigator every month.

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

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.

Future NSTA Conferences

2017 Fall Conferences

• Milwaukee: Nov. 9–11, 2017
• New Orleans: Nov. 30–Dec. 2, 2017

National Conference

• Atlanta: March 15–18, 2018

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Four years ago, when the other seventh-grade science teacher and I started redesigning our curriculum for the NGSS, we knew we would have to include engineering. At that time, my understanding of engineering was pretty limited. I knew that engineers use science to design solutions to problems and that there was an engineering design cycle that included design, build, test, revise. So that’s where we started.

In Kentucky, MS-PS3-2, 3, 4, and 5 are all designated as seventh-grade standards. We decided to bundle MS-PS3-2 and MS-PS3-5 and teach using the phenomenon of roller coasters. Our culminating project for this mini-unit was a student-designed paper roller coaster.

We started the unit by introducing roller coasters to our students, showing YouTube videos, and using an Imagineers website to build a virtual coaster. Then we taught about kinetic energy and potential energy and conducted activities to reinforce those ideas. Obviously, our NGSS strategies faltered then because the NGSS is supposed to shift instruction from “learning about” to “figuring out.” Since we’re focusing on engineering in this piece, we’ll just skip over that NGSS faux pas and move on (for now).

Once we felt the students had a thorough grounding in the disciplinary core ideas about roller coasters, we progressed to the “engineering task.” We had students define the problem by identifying criteria and constraints. Time, size, and materials were part of the constraints. Then we asked the students to design their own roller coaster using the “design, build, test, revise” cycle. The students immediately began constructing the roller coasters they had designed. They turned their design sketches into reality and constructed fun coasters without really considering the science behind the design.

It wasn’t until I dove into the EQuIP Rubric that I realized this might be a problem. (The EQuIP rubric can be used to see how well lessons or units are designed for the NGSS.) A.3 in Category I of the rubric states, “When engineering is a learning focus, it is integrated with developing disciplinary core ideas from physical, life, and/or Earth and space sciences.” As I pondered this, I realized that engineering activities in an NGSS classroom need to be rooted in core ideas from life, Earth, and/or physical science. This meant I needed to craft my engineering challenges to ensure that successful completion of them requires explicit application of one or more core ideas.

To salvage the roller coaster engineering project, we attempted to connect core ideas through student reflection on the process. We asked students about design choices they made and how those choices related to energy. We had students identify places in their build where they deliberately changed their coaster to increase or decrease kinetic energy.  While this did shift the focus toward the science behind the design, I wasn’t satisfied. 

Even after four years, we’re still struggling with how to create engineering design projects that challenge students to actively consider science through the design process.  Often, even in the roller coaster project, students make changes based more on trial and error than on scientific thinking. I wish I could offer you a solution to this problem, but I have only a few untested suggestions. 

My first suggestion is to start the engineering activity with the understanding that we will be discovering ideas about a specific science concept as we work through the engineering design process. If we prepare students with this expectation and keep returning to it, students will begin to internalize it as well. 

One way to accomplish this is to have students complete some kind of daily reflection. We might ask

1. What have you learned about (concept) today?
2. How will you apply this to your design work tomorrow?
3. What new learning about (concept) did you use in your design work today?

Setting the expectations that students will learn and use their learning, providing daily time for reflection, and encouraging productive classroom talk around the intersection of the science and engineering work may provide the catalyst we need to move trial-and-error engineering projects toward true NGSS-aligned engineering tasks. 

David Grossman

David Grossman is a middle school science teacher in Kentucky. He has worked to support NGSS implementation in his school, district, and state. He is currently helping to develop/refine parts of Kentucky’s new science assessment system, and he serves on Achieve’s Peer Review Panel for NGSS-designed lessons and units.

This article was featured in the October 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 September issue on assessing three-dimensional learning. Click here to sign up to receive the Navigator every month.

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

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.

Future NSTA Conferences

2017 Fall Conferences

• Milwaukee: Nov. 9–11, 2017
• New Orleans: Nov. 30–Dec. 2, 2017

National Conference

• Atlanta: March 15–18, 2018

Follow NSTA