Helping Teachers Navigate the Next Generation Science Standards
The Science and Engineering Practice of Asking Questions and Defining Problems asks students to identify the criteria and constraints presented by a given problem. Criteria and constraints are both aspects of a problem that limit a solution. Students should be started to identify these components starting in 3rd grade. Criteria Part of the engineering design …
Last year, I earned my STEM Certificate and Master’s Degree in STEM Leadership. The program made me rethink some common practices in STEM education. The NGSS are designed to bring a STEM focus into the science classroom. Here are some of the common mistakes I see teachers making in STEM. 1. Focusing too heavily on …
Google Slides is a great tool for digital graph annotations. Students can use their own graphs that they create using Google Sheets. Or, you can provide students with a graph, or other form of data, for them to annotate. What are graph annotations? Graph annotations are similar to any other type of annotation. Graph annotations …
I use Google Apps for Education almost every day in my classroom. One of my favorite ways to use Google is to have students create digital graphs. The video below will show you, and your students, how to use Google Sheets to Create Graphs. How do you use Google Sheets to Create a Graph? This …
Which cellular structures do students need to learn about in middle school? There are far fewer than you would think. There are only five cellular structures that students need to learn about in middle school. Why don’t students need to know all of the organelles anymore? Pre-NGSS, the students were required to memorize the …
Nicole and I loved making season 1 of our NGSS podcast that we decided to do it again. And the wait is over. Season 2 of the Teaching Science in 3D podcast is live! What can I look forward to on Season 2? I don’t want to give it all away, but here are a …
I first ran across the terms “unobservable scales” and “unobservable mechanisms” early in my NGSS journey. I had no idea what these were. A google search didn’t provide any answers. Read this post to find out what the terms unobservable scales and mechanisms mean in the NGSS. Where do these terms appear in the NGSS? …
Making sense of the Crosscutting Concepts can be hard. It can be challenging to figure out what they mean and how they relate to your content. I took what I have learned about the Crosscutting Concepts and created an easy to follow crash course. This course will: explain each of the concepts in detail. describe …
I am not one for resolutions, but I do think that the start of a New Year is a great time to reflect on personal goals. It feels a little weird and over personal to post this online. But I think blogs (and the internet in general) can give readers the mistaken impression people have …
2019 is almost over, and so much has changed since the beginning of the year. One of my favorite new adventures was starting the Teaching Science in 3D podcast. Nicole Van Tassel and I created the podcast to help teachers make sense of the three-dimensional NGSS standards. In season one of the podcast, Nicole and …