Note: This blog has been focused solely on NGSS since its inception, but we know that standards are not the only important thing in the classroom. So, I'm going to take one post to talk about starting off the year building the classroom culture.

At the beginning of each of the past several school years, I have spent one class period having students define expectations, developing a vision for the classroom. As I told my students this year, this day is the most important  of the year.  

Last year I decided to organize my classroom around two precepts: 1) respect everyone and 2) focus on the learning.  This week, we spent time diving deep into these ideas to determine what they are going to look like in our classroom.  When I asked my students to help me define what it looks like when a teacher respects students, some were very quiet. Perhaps it was the first time they had been asked this question. Perhaps they weren't sure I was serious. Perhaps they thought it was some sort of trick. However, after a few minutes of wait time, students begin to seriously consider the question. One student said, "You need to listen to me when I'm talking to you." Diving deeper into this, students said they wanted eye contact. One student even suggested a "verbal and visual response" when she was talking to me. I hear variations of this every year. It's simple really;  students want to be heard--they want to know that we are listening. 

The idea of being heard and seen came up in another, more tentative, comment from a student: "Maybe you could ask us how we're doing?" This was confirmation of what we've heard about how much relationships matter.  This was a student, speaking for his peers, asking for that relationship.

We continued the day by defining what it looks like when students respect others, when teachers focus on learning, and when students focus on learning. Through it all, I added very little to the list because it is my goal to ensure that my students realize that we're building the classroom culture together. They were the ones defining the expectations for the class--our class.  

If you're not already having your students contribute to building the classroom culture from the beginning, you might consider starting with an activity like this.  This culture building sets the stage for the cooperative knowledge building and problem solving that the NGSS requires throughout the rest of the year.  

This past school year was a long one, but it was a productive one. In addition to my moving to the high school and teaching biology storylines for the first time, I worked diligently on a project to support teachers who want easy(ish) steps to help them move a little closer to the vision of the NGSS. (See previous post.) 

The project has finally reached the publishing stage. I've compiled these "small steps," with resources to support their implementation, at a new website.  

When you visit the site, choose one of the small steps that you feel comfortable trying in your classroom.  Try it this upcoming school year.  See if it doesn't increase the engagement of your students. See if it doesn't increase the mental work that your students are doing. 

Many of my readers have been with me for a while and are pretty far along on the NGSS journey.  I designed the small steps website for teachers who may not be as far along.  If it's not a good fit for you, please share it with colleagues who may find it useful.  

It is not in its completed form yet.  There are more small steps coming soon.  Keep checking back for more.  Enjoy your summer and don't forget about these small steps when you start planning for 2019-2020.  

I've been thinking recently about why people don't start important projects, why they don't jump on the bandwagon, or why they flame out before they finish the project. 

One reason could be a lack of vision--they can't see the glory of the final product. At the beginning of this school year, I assumed most people who were not implementing the NGSS in their classrooms fell into this category.  I thought that if I could just help them see the vision, they'd jump on board and become amazing NGSS educators.  My goal, then, was to help people see the value of the NGSS and  understand the shifts in content and pedagogy it required.

But what if that wasn't the case?  What if others, like me, avoid projects that seem insurmountable? What if the real reason  some teachers haven't embraced the NGSS is not the lack of vision, but the enormity of what the vision requires--a paralyzing fear? I didn't come to this question on my own; I was helped along the way by conversations with university professors. When Achieve, Inc., the national non-profit that led the writing of the NGSS, recently held a two-day workshop on NGSS implementation, the term "re-novicing" was introduced. The term captures the idea that shifting from traditional science instruction to the NGSS may take experienced teachers and put them back in the role of the novice teacher in some areas.  This can be an uncomfortable place for experienced teachers to be. 

This whole idea hit home with me in February as I realized the enormity of the task to which I had committed myself.  I wanted to provide a resource to teachers to help them implement the NGSS; I wanted to help my district develop a better NGSS implementation plan; and I wanted to do all of this with no budget and no additional time for staff PD. "I'm not equipped to handle this," I thought. "I can't do all that and teach well at the same time." 

The enormity of this task paralyzed me.  It wasn't that I didn't see the vision or the need for the project; I was overwhelmed by what I was trying to accomplish. I threw up my hands in desperation (figuratively) and tried to ignore the feelings of inadequacy that washed over me. Time passed, and I put some distance between the project and me. I realized that this was the feelings that some teachers might have as they looked toward the NGSS.  

Still feeling overwhelmed, I broke the task down into meaningful chunks, just as I plan to do with NGSS implementation for teachers who need it.  

If you're a little intimidated by the vision of the NGSS, where can you start?  You can start by checking out this presentation that a colleague and I made to a group of science teachers and administrators to offer them "small steps" toward NGSS implementation. 

If you're in Kentucky, you can join the same colleague and me at the Let's TALK conference in June where we will present an extended version of that presentation.  

You can also keep watching this space because I'm going to launch a new website to gather these high impact small steps into one location so you can move confidently in the direction of the vision of the NGSS. The launch of the new website should happen sometime this summer, and it will be announced here when it goes live. 

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)." 

The blog and I took a hiatus last year. I moved from an NGSS-aligned science classroom into a Project Lead the Way engineering classroom.  It was a change and a challenge, but it wasn't the best fit for me. At the end of the 2017-2018 school year, the opportunity presented itself for me to move to the high school to teach biology in an NGSS classroom.  I jumped at the opportunity.  It's been a tremendous learning curve and a bit of a struggle as well.  Here as in other schools across the state and nation without NGSS cheerleaders and supportive administrators, NGSS implementation looks very different than it did in the middle school that I left. 

I've spent the first quarter of this year trying to figure things out, make few waves, and follow the biology teacher next door. Doing so has distanced me a bit from the vision and intent of the NGSS.  The NGSS was not designed to be a list of content to be covered; it is a re-visioning of how science is taught. This week, I'm going to embark on bringing this new vision into my classroom. I may make more waves that I wanted to, and I'm certainly charting my own course, but I'm going to do my best to be true to the NGSS. 

I am so thankful for the people doing the curriculum work at Next Generation Storylines for the work they've done.  They have created an entire biology curriculum designed around all of the high school life science standards. I'll be using one of their units starting tomorrow. ​

I'll report back soon on the ups and downs of the shift.  Stay tuned and join me on the journey. 

This week, the National Academies' Board on Science Education met in Washington DC and streamed their meetings live via the web.  While I wasn't in DC for the live meeting, I did experience part of it virtually.  One session was devoted to equity and the NGSS. At this session, a distinction was made between equity and equality. Below are my thoughts regarding equity and equality and the NGSS.

Equality with the NGSS involves access. It's getting everyone to the (lab) table, allowing everyone access to 3-dimensional phenomena-based science education. NCLB has created some equality issues with its emphasis on testing in reading and math. There are classrooms where science is marginalized. Fortunately, I don't have those issues in my school.  We provide high quality science to all of our students, and we're working to make the 3-dimensional phenomena-based. However, equity is another matter.

I heard/understood/developed this definition of equity through the session. Equity is giving everyone the opportunity to make sense of the science. It's providing the scaffolding needed to make sure everyone has a chance to "figure it out." This is where I began to struggle last year and am continuing the productive struggle. Too often, I (and I assume others) do a great job making sure everyone has access to the science learning experiences, but in our follow-up discussions, we allow a few students to share what they "figured out" and then release all of the other students from the expectation that they, too, should be figuring it out. 

I shared this issue with my PLC this year (before the Board on Science Education helped me realize that it's an equity issue) to see if we could come up with some solutions. We developed a few ideas. First, we decided that it is important to develop a culture where it is expected that all students will be actively processing the learning experiences they are engaged in. This requires developing a culture of trust so that students know it's okay to not get the "right answer." It also requires holding students accountable for their own thinking. This means that there are times during the learning experience that all students are going to have to put their thinking down on paper BEFORE they discuss with peers or the class. Since conversations with colleagues help us all to process, it will also be important to capture how students' thinking changes during peer or whole-group discussions. Students may not be used to this and may resit keeping evidence of their "rough draft thinking" after they have developed a better explanation of the phenomenon. This is a pitfall that we'll have to work through by assuring students that it's what scientists (and students) do.  We might even bring in examples from the journals of famous scientists showing their initial ideas and "final drafts." 

As you use the summer to rest and reflect, take some time to think about equality and equity. What steps can you take this upcoming year to make sure that not only all of your students have access to science instruction, but that they also have the opportunity to do their own sense-making? 

I spent several hours on Saturday with a group of educators at Bernheim Forest studying streams and thinking about education. The stream in this picture, like many in the United States has been altered from it's original state.  It has been straightened for efficiency.  It now moves water faster and it doesn't meander all over the bottom land around it that is fertile farm land. The water is clear; you can see the bedrock in the stream; and it looks like a great place to get your feet wet. However, it isn't natural. 

Natural streams (those not "adjusted" by humans) meander. Their water moves slower. They exist in alternating areas of deep pools and shallow ripples. These alternating areas have ecological importance, providing habitat to different kinds of aquatic organisms. These streams contain rocks of many sizes that provide great homes for algae. They don't move water as fast, and they get in the way of farming with all their meandering. 

You may be wondering when I'm going to get to the point. This is, after all, a science blog. I began to think about these two streams as a metaphor for science instruction. We can make science instruction unnatural--a straight path through which we can move kids quickly.  Many examples of curricula do this. It's much easier and quicker to have students memorize the definition of inertia instead of having them experience it and develop deep understanding. It's easier and quicker to design a curriculum of telling students about science as opposed to having them figure out phenomena. 

Just as the health of the stream is affected when we straighten it, the science understanding of our students is affected when we "straighten" and streamline the curriculum. The stream loses biodiversity and transports pollution much easier. The students of a streamlined curriculum end of memorizing a lot of "stuff" that they will soon forget, while failing to develop lasting skills and understandings of science. 

During this summer break, think about your curriculum. Is it like the straightened stream--standardized for efficiency, or is it like a meandering stream--moving at the pace required for true science understanding?  How can you move your curriculum towards that meandering stream metaphor?