Bee an Engineer Part 2: Develop a simple model that mimics the function of an animal in dispersing seeds or pollinating plants.

It is hard to believe sometimes that I get paid for this job.  This past Friday, I was allowed to jump in and play with the kids at one of our local elementary schools. The second grade students were getting ready to build their first hand pollinator as the culminating event to "Bee an Engineer".    It was such a blast to see the creative sparks flying.  The lesson is as near a perfect match, as I have ever seen, to a "standard" or in this case a performance expectation (See below).

 

That is all I will say.   Watch the video and enjoy.

Using Assessments To Improve Solutions

I just had two great days of professional development on assessment.  Yes, I said assessment.  Our instructor was Jan Chappuis.  The entire focus was how to use assessment in a formative way rather than just assigning a grade.  As a matter of fact, grading was discussed very little.  Jan's view is that formative assessments should not be graded but used by teachers and, more importantly, students to determine where they are in terms of mastery.  It means establishing clear learning targets and providing time for students to reflect on assessment results.  A really good explanation of these ideas can be found in an article from the November 2005 issue of "School Leadership" (link).

So what does this mean for my curriculum.  The diagram below illustrates a rudimentary outline of a unit (click to enlarge).  

  
The first lesson introduces the unit problem.  This previews unit concepts prior to the students taking a pre-assessment.  The idea is to give students a diagnostic way to see what they need to learn in order to create a solution to the problem.  The lesson concludes with students imagining solutions for the next day.

Theoretically, the teacher will receive the pre-assessment information from the assessment system in order to create student work teams.  During the second lesson, these teams share their ideas, create a plan based on these ideas.  The team then builds an its initial solution.    This may take several forms depending on the performance expectations.  As described in the previous post (2017: Innovation Block) that may take the form of an engineering design solution such as a car.

The one thing I really like about building the prototype up front is its immediate capacity for differentiation.  Students that are really good at designing a solution have a much harder road ahead of them in order to improve on their original designs.  The lowest performing students can then have tremendous growth.

 Once the teams develop their first solution, they will get to evaluate it in light of their pre-assessment information.  This reflection on the pre-assessment is really important as it sets up Lessons 3 to (X).  The "X" is an unknown variable depending on the number of lessons in the unit.  Each lesson should be designed to answer the question "How will this help me improve my solution?"  At the end, teams revise their solutions and test a second time.  This constitutes their summative assessment.

A word about the engineering design process.  I'm sure many of you have seen the many variations of the engineering design process which usually take the form of cycle.  I agree that this process can be cyclic, but in the real world a solution is eventually marketed.  I have created a hybrid of several versions (below).

You will note the spur that says "Final Design". Yes, solutions can always be improved, but if that was the case, no technology would ever be sold.  What changed my mind about this was a video I watched several years ago about IDEO and the process they used while redesigning a shopping cart.  They tested several designs but in the end made one final version.  

A Five Year Mission

Maryland has established a five year timeline for implementation of the NGSS (below).  In order to make that transition with all the other constraints on what the elementary science curriculum must be, I had to start in October 2013.

I can't speak to the secondary requirements.  I am only concerned with the preK-5 implications.  Notice I said "preK".  Yes, Maryland will have pre-Kindergarten science standards.  These have not been established.  The bottom line  is that I have to have at least six grades of curriculum ready by June 2017 in order to be ready for implementation in Fall 2017.  

How will I do it?  Well, I won't be doing it by myself.  I have assembled an amazing group of teachers to be my NGSS Transition Team. More about them later.  This team is meeting now to build the unit blueprints based on the Understanding by Design framework.  Their job is to build what I refer to as the bookends of a unit.  Once the performance expectations are established,  essential questions, and enduring understandings help frame the big ideas (Stage one).  They will also develop the initial performance based assessments that students will have to complete in order to demonstrate understanding (Stage two).  The rest of my timeline follows a very simple pattern.  

Once the NGSS team completes the blueprints, they hand it off to curriculum writers (which fortunately will be many of the team).  These writers will write the initial unit drafts (Stage Three).  Once these drafts are complete, my two resource teachers and I will add meat to the bones.  This will include the addition and creation of learning objects for our new digital curriculum system.  It will also mean the development and testing of the materials needed to implement the various hands-on experiments students will conduct.  That's right, I get to play with scientific materials in my job.  Envy me.  Once we are satisfied with the unit drafts, we train a small pilot group of teachers.  The goal is 10-15 schools scattered across our county.  These teachers implement the units and report back on what needs to be changed.  We make improvements and deploy to all schools the following year.  The year I am most fearful of is 2016.  I will be refining grades 3-5 and monitoring the pilot for grades K-2.  

So, what is your plan to bring the NGSS to the elementary classroom?

Bee an Engineer: My First NGSS Unit (Part 1)

I lucked out last year during a curriculum revision project.  I  had two units that were up for revision.  One was on botany and the other was on insects.  After looking at the NGSS, the page shown above just sang to me.  The resulting unit combined the concepts of these two units into one and culminated in students designing and building their own hand pollinator.  Th inspiration for the culminating event came from Engineering is Elementary- "The Best of Bugs: Designing Hand Pollinators".

If you notice the asterisks (*) at the end of the second PE, that indicates a connection to the newest content to enter the science classroom-Engineering.  In our current standards, engineering is referenced under the skills and processes.  Under the NGSS it is now a content like Biology or Physics.  The unit is now being implemented by teachers.  Over the next few weeks, I will update you on the progress students and teachers are making.