Next Gen Science Standards
Next Generation Science Standards
I am sure most of you have at least some experience with the Next Generation Science Standards or NGSS. NGSS was developed by a cohort of people around the Framework K-12 Science Education book by the National Research Council. If you have not read this book, I strongly suggest it. You can get a free online copy.
The framework discusses how people learn science. It discusses the exploration and wonder children have and become natural scientists because of it. With this in mind, the NGSS were developed to capture these ideas while allowing students to explore through inquiry. This means the NGSS was designed with the intention that teachers would design inquiry lessons around these ideas.
This copy has the supporting standards, but not the evidence statements. The copy below is the same standard with evidence statements, but no supporting standards.
1 Performance task
2. Science and Engineering Practices
3. Disciplinary core Idea
4. Crosscutting Concepts
5. Evidence Statements
6. Supporting standards
Each standard has a main idea or concept, and all of the evidence statements have the basic vocabulary and skills the students would need to understand the concept, as well as highlight the larger connections that should be made. The standards tell you what the students should learn, and this is done by breaking the standard up into different sections.
Basic Breakdown Of Every Standard
You can also read about the standards here.
Performance Task
The performance task or the PT is the end “goal” if you will. Now it is not the true goal, because it is how you should design your assessment. So, it is a goal in the regard that you want your kids to be able to get there, but it can’t be a true goal because it is lacking any real specificity. The performance tasks take the specific Disciplinary core idea and combine it with the specified Science and Engineering Practice and the specified Crosscutting Concept. The performance task is what the students should be able to do by the end of the unit.
Science & Engineering Practices
The Science and Engineering Practices or SEP, are skills the students can work on. These skills were once thought of as the scientific process, and sometimes called physical standards, but that idea has been moved away from as science does not have to be that straightforward. The SEPs are things like planning and carrying out investigations, analyzing and interpreting data, obtaining, evaluating, and communicating scientific information, and a few others. The SEPs were designed with the idea of what scientists do, in mind.
Disciplinary Core Idea
The Disciplinary Core Idea, or DCI, is what the academic standards used to be. They are a straightforward fact or concept, and a teacher was supposed to develop the units however that person saw fit. The DCIs are the scientific basis behind each standard, and what students should learn.
Crosscutting Concepts
The Crosscutting Concepts or CC, are ideas that are in all fields of science. All scientific fields of study have a scale of measurement, or being able to proportion that scale; or all fields have patterns with causes and effects. These ideas are how you are going to be able to take just facts and develop deeper understandings with your students. The CCs are the connections your students should be able to make about a concept.
Evidence Statements
The Evidence Statements are listed at the bottom of the standard, or if you are on the website you will have to click view evidence statements on the right. The evidence statements should be kept in mind when developing your daily lessons because they are the minimum steps the students will have to complete for them to be successful at completing the PT. Each set of Evidence Statements is broken into various steps and levels of understanding. Some are broken into Claims Evidence REasoning, while others are more focused on Components, Relationships, and Connections. Each is designed with that PT in mind.
Supporting Standards
On the website at the bottom of each standard, there are connections to other DCIs to help with vertical alignment, which is aligning to other topics in different grades. Or there are connections of DCIs to other content in your class throughout the year. Also, there are vertical alignments, or connections to other content in the same year, in this case, either a specific Common Core Math Standards or Common Core Literacy Standards, sometimes both.