Rough Estimates of Unit Lengths

Based on my last post, I figured out that I could estimate the length of each unit based on some assumptions:

• Unit opens with one day for preview/preassessment
• The second lesson requires students to develop a prototype/solution and reflect on preassessment data
• Each performance assessment needs at least three lessons in order for students to demonstrate mastery
• One lesson to understand the practice by having students apply it to prior knowledge
• One lesson to understand the DCI (content)
• One lesson to combine them together
• A lesson where students revise their prototype/solution as a culminating event

Using this logic, just for the purposes of estimating unit lengths, I can quickly deduce the range of teaching time based on a 30-60 minute per day structure.  

Grade-Unit	PEs	Lessons	Days
K-Forces	2	9	9-18
K-Relationship	4	15	15-30
K-Weather	4	15	15-30
TOTAL	10	39	39-78
1-Light	4	15	15-30
1-Function	3	12	12-24
1-Space	2	9	9-18
TOTAL	9	36	36-72
2-Structure	4	15	15-30
2-Interdependent	3	12	12-24
2-Earth	4	15	15-30
TOTAL	11	42	42-84
3-Forces	4	15	15-30
3-Ecosystems	4	15	15-30
3-Traits	4	15	15-30
3-Weather	3	12	12-24
TOTAL	15	57	57-114
4-Energy	5	18	18-36
4-Waves	2	9	9-18
4-Structure	3	12	12-24
4-Earth	4	15	15-30
TOTAL	14	54	54-108
5-Matter	4	15	15-30
5-Ecosystems	3	12	12-24
5-Earth	3	12	12-24
5-Space	3	12	12-24
TOTAL	13	51	51-102

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.  

2017: Innovation Block (Formerly Known As Science)

About a month ago I made the mistake of reading Sugata Mitra's book (see previous post) and Dr. Tony Wagner"s book on Innovation at the same time.  A person cannot read that many radical ideas at once without being changed.  This mental shift occurs at the same time I am forming my image of what elementary science would look like by the 2017-2018 school year.  To help bring that image to life, I decided to write a narrative account of it.

2017:  Innovation Block

(Formerly Known as Science)

Paige and her project group barely had time to finish eating lunch.  They could not stop talking about how they would  solve the problem with their electromagnetic release system.  Earlier in the week, Ms. Johnson introduced the Automotive Engineering unit like the other units by giving students the problem statement.  This included the project constraints and Gantt chart (project timeline).  Students were allowed to pick the initial work team knowing that they would be reorganized after the first build.  

The class took the first lesson to design the car and take the pre-test.  These never felt like tests to Paige.  The questions were worded to align with the goals of the project.  The questions helped Paige to focus on what was needed to improve the car design.  Yesterday, Paige and her team built a car based on their designs.   Half way down the ramp, the back wheel fell off Paige’s car.  The car swerved awkwardly as it came off the ramp; the back axle dragged on the ground.  It was a rough start, but better than some of the designs students made.   During the weather unit, the hurricane barrier Paige’s team made did not stand up to a Category I storm the first time.  By the end, it survived to a Category IV. 

That’s what Paige really liked about her innovation block.  There was always time to improve on her original design.  She learned that this was even how real engineers worked last year when she was able to Skype with a Materials Engineer from BD Diagnostics.   After their first build, Paige used her laptop to submit a video recording of what went wrong with the car and some ideas on what needed to change.  She was really looking forward to seeing how far and fast the car would go. 

During next class, Ms. Johnson organized the groups based on how students did on the pre-tests.  Paige was always a little nervous when this happened.  Each time groups were formed; there were always one or two people with whom she had not worked before.     It always seemed to work for her because everyone in the group had about the same level of knowledge as she did.  She had some background knowledge on science from what she saw on TV and what she learned in Kindergarten through Second grade.  She remembered some of the ideas she was taught in Kindergarten about how heavier objects rolled farther than light objects.  This project felt like an elaboration on those ideas.

Today, Paige’s team was trying to work out how the electromagnetic release system worked.  This was an important part of the project.  If the car did not release correctly, the time would not be very accurate.  They were doing a lot of math in this project.  They had to calculate the speed of the car even though they were going to use a photogate.  Estevan asked “Why do we have to do the calculations if the photogate will do it for us?”  Ms. Johnson responded by asking “How do you know it is accurate?”  It was sometimes hard for Paige to know when she was doing science or math during the innovation block.

One of the constraints the teams had to work under was that they had to understand how the electromagnetic release system worked on their car.  Paige’s team decided one big paperclip would be enough to hold the car in place, but they found out the magnetic would not hold the car at the top of the ramp. They needed to come up with a better solution.   To start the lesson, the team recorded their initial claim about how the electromagnet worked in their interactive notebooks.  Paige thought best using pictures and drew a diagram showing a magnet plugged into the wall.  She was not sure how the electromagnet worked.

The team turned on their laptops and logged into BCPS One.  They found the content for the magnetic forces and read the introduction.  There were several options for this lesson.  There was a great BrainPop video that talked about magnets.  Paige liked these but decided to start with the Discovery Learning simulation.  She needed to manipulate the strength of the magnet.  Ms. Johnson stopped by and asked the group how much they accomplished on today’s lesson. She used her laptop to record everyone’s progress and moved to the next group.   After viewing the video, the team decided that they needed to do the hands-on portion of the lesson. 

Paige always liked the “Experiment” objects in BCPS One. The Office of Science produced short videos that introduced the lab and provided a list of materials.  When they were ready, Ms. Johnson would give them the materials they needed.  In this case it was just a battery, wire, nail and some paper clips.  The team built an electromagnet by wrapping the wire around the nail and touching the wire to the battery terminals.  She was amazed when the paperclips were attracted to the nail.  She recorded her findings in her interactive notebook.   She liked looking back through her notebook to see how much she has grown from the start of the year. 

Ms. Johnson told them it was time to complete their work for the day.  Paige’s group completed their experiment and responded to the wrap up question in their interactive notebook.  Paige snapped picture of her introductory question and wrap up question for her e-portfolio.  Ms. Johnson would look over her responses and give her feedback. Paige was anxious to tackle her wheel problem tomorrow.  It was not going to fall off next time!  

Winning the Hearts and Minds

Wow!  I should have thought about sending this out to the NSTA community earlier.  Glad to have you on board.   I thought I would talk a little more about my NGSS transition team.  I made mention of them in my previous post.  The team is made up of 30 classroom teachers.  I made that a requirement for service.  Too often, specialists that are not living the day to day implementation of curriculum ultimately dictate what happens in the classroom.  I feel very strongly that that if a curriculum is going to be accepted by teachers, then teachers must be intimately involved in its creation.  I also made sure the teachers that help develop the curriculum are also there when we conduct the professional development.  I'm not in a classroom so I know I do not of a legitimate voice in front of teachers.

Besides being a classroom teacher, I also wanted representation from all areas of our county.  I have to make sure the curriculum speaks to all students and not just to the "Lake Wobegon" region.  This resulted in six teams of five.  One team for each grade level with a teacher from each of the five geographic regions.

The team has been meeting throughout the year and I am constantly amazed by their endurance.  We are dealing with some profound changes in how science will be taught.  Given that much of the change focuses on the "Practices", I opted to spend a lot of time on those (see image below).  I also wanted to make sure the team had a chance to think about how this curriculum would be reflected in our new Learning Management System (LMS).

Our first workshop was on "Argument Based on Evidence".  I was very fortunate to have Carla Zebal-Saul and her team from Penn State come down to work with us.  After reading her book "What's Your Evidence?", I know their CER (Claim-Evidence-Reasoning) framework was what I wanted for every student.  I will expound about this workshop later.

                                                          

The premise for the second workshop really focused on how do we make math a meaningful part of the science curriculum.  What came out of it was a focus on having students apply the math concepts they should be fluent in for a particular grade level according to Common Core.

I am very excited about the upcoming April workshop.  Spatial literacy is something you will hear me rant about if you keep reading this blog.  A lot of current research points to it being a missing link in developing a STEM ready workforce.  This is particularly true in underrepresented populations.

The goal of the June workshop will be to complete Stage 1 and 2 according to Understanding by Design. This means establishing an essential question, enduring understandings, and a performance based assessment  for each unit.  These blueprints will then be turned over to the curriculum development team in July to complete stage 3.

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.

Topic or Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI)

Let's start with the basics.  One of the first decisions to be made is what format to use when formulating curriculum.  For me, the choice was pretty obvious.  I liked the topic based format because it integrated the content under big ideas or themes.  I am hesitant to call them themes, however, as I lived through the end of the last time we organized curriculum by theme.  The idea was good but the execution was bad.  The classic example was students would study Egyptian history in Social Studies.  In math, they would study the geometry of the pyramids.  So far, so good.  The idea would go off the rails when the science teacher would study mummification and the students would make mummy models.  Back on topic.  The integration of content is something that has really come about in the last few years.  It is no longer enough to be a biologist.  You need to understand how Biology integrates with Physics as well.  A more extreme example would be a paleontologist that started as an art major.  The ability to see the patterns and make spatial connections is as important as knowing what rock layer and bone is sticking out of the ground.  The only problem I have is figuring out the logic behind the organization of the PE's.  Was there a plan when they were organized this way or was it more like "yeah, that fits." So where do you stand-Topic or DCI?

Creating the Road Less Taken

I am a ruthless pragmatist and have never found utility in developing a blog of my own until now. As a curriculum developer for a large school system, I have the task of moving a large number of schools and teachers into a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) based curriculum. For those you unfamiliar with them, I would encourage you to take a look at the standards. Now, just so we are all on the same page, that will be the last time I use the word standards. The NGSS are not traditional standards.  They are written as Performance Expectations (PE).  This means this means that rather spelling out exactly what students are supposed to know, they layout how students are supposed to demonstrate they understand a concept through an action otherwise known as a practice.  For example, in Kindergarten one of the PE's is stated as

Analyze data to determine if a design solution works as intended to change the speed or direction of an object with a push or a pull.

So, why the blog?  Well, I'm glad you asked.  I think there is an opportunity to share ideas and ideas are needed.  Who am I looking for?  Well for right now, I just want to gather input from elementary teachers, principals, and elementary students.  As I go along, I will be updating whatever audience develops on my progress to gather feedback and to hopefully share some best management practices.  Who am I not looking for?  I am not looking for people to want to rant and rave about the PE's or my any typos I make herein.  I have no time for it.  

With all that said,  let me know if you are out there and interested in the NGSS.