In my classroom, I achieve this by using it as my assessment guide. My assessment questions will have the same wording as the CC. 

Ask things like... 

(In the above standard) What causes the ________ to ____________? 

How do you know it causes the __________ to ____________?

What did you see/hear/feel, when __________ happened?

What patterns do you see in the data? 

According to this pattern, if you did the next trial what results would you likely see?

What causes the population to rise in the spring? 

What effect does this population growth have on the predator population growth?

What are the components of your model? 

In your model, what relationships do you notice?

These questions are pretty vague for a couple of reasons. There is no unit information or lesson information to put them into context. As the reader, you need questions that are as broad as possible so you can make them specific to your work. Also, I give vague questions like this to my students, so I don’t limit their thinking and add biases to my assessments. Having questions like What patterns do you see, allows students to pay attention to their work, think for themselves, and discuss with each other. Questions like these allow the students some autonomy in their thinking. Questions like these have no wrong answers unless a student says something like dog or purple, obviously not patterns. Then asking the next question makes them think and predict based on evidence they already experienced, while again allowing students to follow their train of thought. If the second question were too specific, students may feel lost or think they got the first question wrong. These are also words used in standardized testing, and students need to be prepared to hear these types of questions. 

Choosing the content to teach can be tough. A Crosscutting Concept is like the map the teacher uses to make sure the students are going in the right direction in their learning. There are so many different ways you can look at the same content, but the CCs ensure that everyone is looking at the same concept in the same way. My reliance on the crosscutting concept is one of the avenues I use to allow flexibility and individual choice in what students learn, but still, ensure that we are talking about specific scientific aspects that all of the students can relate to their learning too.  It can take a hundred different ideas and focus them on one or two. This can make it so much easier to plan lessons for individual learning. Students can have individual experiments, but still all be learning about cause and effect or patterns by how the guiding questions are asked. 

You can also read more about Crosscutting concepts from the NGSS by clicking here.