When I first began teaching, I was required to list the objectives of my whiteboard every day. In the last couple of years, I have almost given up this practice entirely in my classroom. In my classroom, students work to…
It is vital that we use phenomena to drive lessons in an NGSS aligned classroom and engage your learners. Here are a few examples of simple phenomena for your NGSS aligned class. What are the simple phenomena? Too often, teachers…
Graphing data is an essential skill in an NGSS aligned classroom. The Next Generation Science Standards require that students use data that they have collected in order to construct their own graphs. Constructing a graph also helps students to analyze…
The first Science and Engineering Practice focuses on asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering). Questions drive the scientific process, while definition the problem that needs to be solved drives the engineering process. Because of the essential nature…
I spent the first three days of my week becoming a Google Certified Educator. It was pretty intense, but I passed my level one and level two certification. The lists of cool things that I learned is pretty long, but…
The Science and Engineering practice of Planning and Carrying out Investigations requires students to take a more active role in classroom experiment. Many teachers struggle with providing support for the experimental design process. However, it is essential that teachers provide…
This simple sample lesson allows students to explore how their shadow changes through out the day due to the position of the sun in the sky. Students can analyze the data created by the chalk outlines of their shadows.
The instructional shifts that come with NGSS are huge. Consequently, there are a lot of mistakes to be made. Here are the 7 most common mistakes that teachers make when shifting to the NGSS. What are the mistakes that teachers…
NGSS Evidence Statements provide answers to many of the questions that you have about the NGSS. Learn more in this post. What are the NGSS Evidence Statements? Before I found the Evidence Statements, I was pretty confused about the NGSS. …
Lesson planning for NGSS takes a lot of work. Look everyone! I created my first video. It basically took me about 10 hours to create this video on digital lesson planning. Not because the video editing is hard, but because…
