The Crosscutting Concepts connect different areas of science and provide connections for students from year-to-year. On the surface, they look simple. But in practice, they are a part of the NGSS that often is overlooked. In this post, I’ll discuss practical strategies for including the CCCs in your day-to-day lesson plans.
Crosscutting Concepts and Planning
Ideally, the Crosscutting Concepts appear daily in your lessons. The easiest way to incorporate them is by creating routines that work with the things you are already doing in your classes.
Strategy #1: Start with Adding Questions
A simple strategy for using the Crosscutting Concepts is to add questions focused on these concepts to resources that you already have. For example, add a question about Stability and Change a lab analysis activity. Over time, these questions train students to look for connections instead of treating CCCs like an “extra.”
To make this easy, I put together 55 simple Crosscutting Concept questions you can plug into lessons right away. To get the resource, click here.
Strategy #2 Create a Place in Your Classroom
Consider devoting a place in your classroom to the Crosscutting Concepts. I have Juli Cannon’s Crosscutting Concept posters in my room. When a concept comes up, I physically reference that spot so students connect the vocabulary to real examples. Then, we add a new sticky in the same way that Juli did. As a result, reviewing connections to previous lessons is quick and easy.
This makes the CCCs visible. It also makes it easier to reinforce connections during discussions, labs, and review.
Strategy #3 Use Vocabulary
The Crosscutting Concepts provide common language across all science disciplines. Because of that, explicit vocabulary instruction is a powerful strategy. When students understand terms like system, stability, structure, and scale, they can use them to explain science more clearly.
To learn more about teaching vocabulary, click here.
Strategy #4 Warm-Ups and Exit Tickets
Crosscutting Concepts work really well in warm ups and exit tickets because they help students build habits of thinking, not just content knowledge. For example, choose one CCC question stem and use it all week so students learn how to apply the same thinking across different lessons. So, students can look for patterns, describe a cause and effect relationship, or explain how a system is staying stable or changing. Its possible to use a similar strategy for exit tickets.
Once students feel comfortable with utilizing a single crosscutting concept, you can add in additional concepts.
Strategy #5 Use Graphic Organizers
Creating a usable structure like graphic organizers is also incredibly helpful. This gives students a clear routine for making connections to the concepts. These can be utilized again and again to strengthen connections between content areas.
I’ve create graphic organizers specific to each grade band. For more information, click here.
