For many teachers, the NGSS brings fears of lab investigations that are chaotic because they are planned and carried out solely by students.  After all, the NGSS says that students need to "plan and carry out investigations." When I taught middle school, I was quick to jump into this practice and have students developing procedures to test hypotheses while also trying to help them understand how to control variables. That's not super difficult at the middle school when we're still working with very concrete phenomena. However, high school teachers work with phenomena that have causes that are often invisible to the naked eye (e.g. electron configuration).  They may also work with specialized equipment that required specific operating procedures. Teachers, including this one, may balk at the idea of having students plan and carry out investigations using this specialized equipment.  

I completely understand this feeling. Even in middle school, we performed investigations that had to be carried out in a specific way--students had to follow given directions. In these kinds of labs, I worked hard to make some part of the lab open for student planning, but I was not always successful.  

This weekend, though, I had an epiphany.  What if the investigation went something like this. . . 

In the course of a phenomena-based unit, as students are working to gather information to figure out a phenomenon, there arises a need for a specific kind of data.  For example, in the Next Generation Storyline unit I'm using, students are currently trying to figure out what happens to glucose when it leaves the chloroplast. The next investigation has students analyze various parts of the plant/tree for sugar, starch, and cellulose. These tests use specific reagents and have specific procedures. Students cannot be expected to design the procedures for these tests. However, when students realize that they need this data, the teacher can provide a procedure that will give the students the data that they have requested.  It's a very simple switch. Instead of saying, "Here's the next activity we're going to do." Students drive the learning and make suggestions about what to do next or what they want to learn next. These suggestions should eventually circle around to something like, "I wonder if we would find glucose in certain parts of plants/trees?" I can then follow up with, "Well, I have some specific tests that show the presence of simple sugars, starch, and cellulose. Would those help you in trying to figure this out?"  

In this method, students aren't designing a classic science fair investigation from start to finish, but they are providing the need for data, deciding how to use the specific procedure to acquire that data, and deciding what to do with the data that they gather.  In doing this, they are "doing what scientists do" and "thinking like scientists." 

This can't be the only kind of planning and carrying out investigations that students do. The details of the practice (found in Appendix F) provide more information on everything students are expected to do with regards to planning and carrying out investigations in each grade band. However, this is one more way that we can move a little closer towards the vision of the NGSS in our classrooms.  Is there a lab in your future that you could try this approach with? 

The past couple of weeks have been difficult for building momentum due to school breaks due to weather and election day; however, I've seen some progress with my students as we move towards a NGSS-designed curriculum.  I've also seen some struggles. 

First the struggles.  I've seen students seeking "right" answers. Students grow accustomed to a model where the teacher provides knowledge and students memorize it.  Then they follow that up with a regurgitation of the knowledge, providing correct answers.  This process doesn't work with the NGSS, as students are expected to reason and create their own understanding.  This difference was highlighted before our most recent assessment.  Students knew that they were going to have to create a model showing everything we'd learned about photosynthesis.  We had brainstormed the criteria for a complete model (based on our understanding). Students trained on the knowledge regurgitation model asked, "Can you just give us a model to study from?"  While this would have ensured that students' models contained all of the necessary information, it would have reduced the cognitive load for them. Instead of having to assemble the pieces into a coherent model, all they would have to do was memorize and replicate my model.  Needless to say, I did not provide them with a sample model to study. 

Now for some success. The results of this particular assessment helped me to see that students were in different stages of concept attainment. Some students had a thorough understanding of what happened in the chloroplasts (minus the biochemistry, per the standards) and knew how each piece of the equation entered or left the chloroplast, leaf, and the tree.  Other students had an understanding of the process, but they had not yet made the connection between the subsystems that make photosynthesis possible (e.g. xylem/phloem, leaves, and roots) and the chloroplast. Still other students had somehow evaded their responsibility for building their own understanding, providing me with a "model" showing a tree releasing oxygen while taking in carbon dioxide.  

So, now it's time to regroup and figure out how to help the students who didn't get it, move from that to "got it." I'm not sure how exactly to do that, but I'm thinking of having them trace one of the reactants or products of photosynthesis on it's journey through the tree, to or from the chloroplast. 

Stay tuned for more updates as we press on, helping students move from vessels to contain knowledge to active participants in constructing their own understanding using the same kind of practices that scientists do.  

Last week I made the jump. I moved into an NGSS-designed curriculum for my high school biology class. The first thing you should know is that we all survived (students and teachers). The second thing you should know is that it required work. 

One of the first things I had to do was to let go of some things. In the traditional curriculum, you'd call the unit I'm teaching "the photosynthesis unit." The NGSS has a different approach to photosynthesis than the biology textbook, though.  The NGSS is designed to produce science-literate citizens instead of memorizers of minutiae.  In this vein, the NGSS specifically excludes the biochemical pathways of photosynthesis. Instead, we need students to build their own knowledge about the big picture of photosynthesis. So, I let go of the Calvin Cycle, the electron transport chain, and all the other molecules that play a role in photosynthesis. 

One of the next things I had to do was to stop "telling students stuff." Students don't necessarily learn things just because we tell it to them. They may take notes and study for a test, but does the knowledge really persist beyond the test? Instead, I allowed students to build their own knowledge just like scientists do. They spent some time looking at Priestly's bell jar experiment as well as a similar, more recent experiment in the UK that involved a human in a sealed enclosure with plants. They had to figure out what the results meant.  Whether or not they remember the data or the conclusions, they have gained valuable experience analyzing data, looking for patterns, and explaining data. 

We've long heard that purpose is important in learning: students need to know why they need to know this stuff. In this unit, we're building understanding so that we can evaluate a claim that says planting trees can reduce the effects of climate change. This week, we struggled through and added new knowledge to our existing understanding of photosynthesis. As we return to school after election day, we'll be looking into how chloroplasts get water and what they do with their products. Once we have this, we'll be closer to figuring out how tress (and all plants) may be helpful in reducing the effects of climate change.  Stay tuned for more updates. 

**Want to see the unit I'm using?  Check it out as well as all of the other storylines at the Next Generation Science Storyline Project website. I'm using "How do small things make big impacts on ecosystems? (part 2)."