Is Curriculum a Guide or a Script?

It has been a while since my last post.  Actually, it seems like a lifetime ago.  I will diverge from my normal discussion of science curriculum for a moment, but will bring it back around.  Just stay with me.

Last July, my father was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of cancer undoubtedly from exposure to Agent Orange during his year of service in Vietnam.  He was a helicopter pilot and was tasked with spraying the herbicide.  He told me that due to the prop wash, he would come back soaked in it.

My father just prior to deployment in 1968.

I was out of the office almost all of November due to the complications he has endured through this process.  I've learned more about the science and art of medicine in these last few months than I ever wanted to know.  At one point, I found myself sitting at my father's bedside with my mother and the oncologist as we discussed treatment options.  The Mayo Clinic was consulted and a treatment regime was prescribed which had been deemed effective for most patients.  I say "most" because my father has a rather complex medical history.  Complex enough that it should qualify him for a season of "House".

The oncologist read through the recommendations with us and reviewed  my father's most recent test results.  Based on these results, he decided to follow a slightly different regime.   As of this posting, my father has seen a 70% reduction in the "bad cells" and we are hopeful that by the end of January to be in remission.

What are the lessons to be learned here?

• A set of treatments was prescribed.  
• Test results prior to treatment indicated a modified, more individual course of action.    
• The treatment is proving to be successful. 
• There is an art and science to treatment.  

Let's get back on the topic of this blog.  My primary job, at the moment, is developing curriculum based on the Next Generation Science Standards for the throngs of teachers in my system. This curriculum is a suggested course of action.  It provides many of the components needed to assist teachers in developing mastery of the standards in students.  Now, I'm not comparing myself to the Mayo Clinic, but the expectation is that I am the local expert on the NGSS.  Now I could complete this analogy but I think you know where I am going.  Teachers are the doctors and students are the patients.

What is the purpose of curriculum?  As a teacher, I lived two very different realities when it came to curriculum.  As a kindergarten teacher, I had no curriculum.  I based my instruction on the end of grade level expectations.  I had to make up curriculum on my own.  As a high school science teacher, I received curriculum from my supervisor.  A three inch thick binder.  Blue with a green cover as I recall.  I remember looking through it and realizing that, while it had good lessons it did not meet the needs of my students.  Once again, I had to make up my own curriculum, but at least I had a starting point.  

The idea of following a curriculum, chapter and verse, never occurred to me. I always viewed curriculum as a guide developed by people who have a pretty good idea about what most kids need.  We'll call this a science.  It was then my job as a teacher to find the best fit for my students. That takes a little science and a lot of art to make that happen. Great teachers are almost poetic.

As I discussed back in October (Articulating Expectations into a Personalized Learning Environment), I outlined a new set of curriculum expectations developed by my school system.  In summary,  through pre-assessment, we formatively use data to diagnose where students are before instruction starts.  The result is multiple groups of students consuming instruction based on their instructional need in the same room.

 I would hope that the merits of small group instruction are self-evident, but consider this.  In one of my prior jobs, I worked with "gifted" students.  How many of these students coast through instruction they have already mastered?  Conversely, how many students endure instruction for which they are not ready?  

The question is, then what.  How do you logistically manage a class like this. At the secondary level, there are more options.  Students can take different classes.  At the elementary level, it is more self-contained.  A reality lost on many people outside (and some inside) education.

So, I am opening a dialogue to discuss these ideas.  I am going to host a webinar on February 2 (Ground Hog Day) to develop some concrete strategies for all of us.  Click on this hyperlink at 7:00 PM (EST).  The rough agenda will be as follows.

• I will discuss the specifics of the curriculum framework I developed   (I am open to other ideas.)
• Start building a set of management strategies for teachers
• Think beyond the current realities of classroom instruction.  Do we need a different concept of what a classroom is?  What does the field of  educational technology need to offer us?  Do we need to "Amazonify" how students access content? 

I look forward to talking with you at the webinar!

How did we choose what to teach in the NGSS?

Greetings everyone!  Just getting back from NSTA and am really charged up (as is the intention of good conferences).  It is really gratifying to talk with so many enthusiastic teachers and administrators with a passion for teaching elementary students about the wonders of the universe.  I still find it a hoot when I get approached by people excited about reading my blog.  It tells me there is a real need to talk about this time of change we are going through, but please don't take my word for it...

 Honestly, the intent of this blog from the beginning has been to put out the path that I am taking not as thee  path, but as a set of ideas to get this process moving.  I want to be questioned and challenged about my ideas.  Indeed, challenge is the path to improvement.  In the spirit of that idea, I have been asked the question in my title several times.  So here is my response.  

I use the topic based arrangement of the NGSS as is.  Each page of performance expectations is the basis for a unit.  My assumption has been that there was some reason the PE's to be bundled this way; although after questioning the writers for confirmation of this the best I got was "these are the ones that seemed to fit together coherently."  In a couple of units, we have to get very creative.  

The grade 3 page on Forces and Motion for example.  It combines classic Newtonian concepts with electromagnetic forces. We can make it work, but it feels very odd.  The Safe Racer program is being upgraded.  It will not only challenge students to keep an egg safe in their cars, but also require them to explain how the magnetic release system we will be adding works.  Along with measuring how far the car goes, we can measure how fast the cars are going by accurately measuring the time it takes the car to reach the end of the ramp.  

In another example, the unit is split into two parts under a coherent storyline.  The Kindergarten Weather & Climate performance expectations have two distinct themes; protecting yourself from the sun and predicting the weather.  Our storyline for this unit asks students to build a structure to protect everyone from the sun while on the playground.  Part 2 asks the students to evaluate weather data in order to determine if they should tell the principal to take down the structure so it is not damaged by severe weather.  We actually have students evaluate the radar image.  It is easier than you think.  Break it down into two parts.  What colors symbolize severe weather and what direction is it moving?

So why not cherry pick the NGSS like so many publishers are doing.  For one, the NGSS is built on learning progressions.   This focus on progressions makes science cumulative.  When I talk to principals and other officials, I tell them to think about science like math now.  Imagine what would happen if schools stopped teaching math from K-5.  There is no way middle schools would ever compensate for that lost foundational knowledge.  That is science in an NGSS world.
  
My second concern in a buffet approach to the NGSS is orphaning a performance expectation.  I did not want to get to the end of curriculum writing and realize we missed one.  The one exception to this was in grade 5.  I shifted the PE on people improving the environment (5-ESS3-1) from the Earth Systems page to the Movement of Energy and Matter page.  That was the topic of my last blog entry.  

Lastly, I have ignored the engineering PE's as a separate entity.  It felt too much like the days when we "wove in" the old skills and processes.   Each unit, so far, has students working collaboratively to build a physical object.  That may be a model (beach erosion prevention), prototype (biomimicry solution), or fully functioning object (hand pollinator for example).  In this way, students are learning to act as engineers within context.  

As always, context and relevance are of extreme importance to me.  We are a practical species.  We tend to care about things when they are important to us.  I attended a pre-conference session by Megan Bang.   One of the great points she brought up is that we have to stop expecting our students to ask questions and respond based on our cultural norms.  What does that mean in this context?  Curriculum developers may find the phenomena of science exciting but until students see themselves connected to it, they will continue to ignore it.  As you read through your curriculum ask yourself these two questions from the perspective of your students.

Why am I learning this?

What will it help me to do?

2/3 Down and Looking Ahead

Greetings Science Curriculum Fans!  Well, we are two thirds done with curriculum writing this year.   I think we are getting a little better each time.  How do I know?  During the reviews, we give each table a composition book to record suggested changes or concerns they have.  The number of comments drastically dropped between  the first review and second.  Not a scientific study but a point of data nonetheless.

As often happens, a discussion with the field test teachers led to an inspired project for me.  Each of the major curriculum offices create their own implementation calendars.  Mine is a suggested sequence by unit.  The reading office has their calendar by week.  The idea that came about was a combined calendar showing all the curriculum at once.  

I am still gathering input on the layout, but it has been met with a lot of interest from the few teachers who have seen the draft.

Moving ahead, I prepare for curriculum writing this summer.  As stated earlier (A Five Year Mission),  this summer we start work on grades three through five.  This summer will be a little different.  I started with teams of five teachers working on one unit.  That was a little ungainly and presented a curriculum draft with lots of voices to sort out and homogenize.  This summer the teams will be smaller with only three writers per unit.  Also, I solicited middle school science teachers and Gateway to Technology teachers.  As I look at the performance expectations, much of the content at grades four and five is currently taught in middle school.  Whats more, I really want the insights that the Gateway to Technology teachers bring.  They manage engineering projects with students everyday.  That kind of pedagogical knowledge will be worth its weight in gold.  

Stay tuned. Over the next few weeks.  I will give you some ideas about the storylines we are planning for this summer.  Here are a few hints:

A Look Back on Two Weeks of Curriculum Writing

The dust has settled on curriculum writing.  My regiment of writers have started their vacations and I am left with a full Dropbox Don't worry.  I also have everything backed up on at least two flashdrives.  You only make that mistake once.  The files include unit level documents such as the scenario, unit outline, and pre/post assessments.  More importantly, there are a series of files for each lesson.  This includes the teacher lesson plan, student storyboard, interactive notebook pages, and lesson assessment.  The student storyboard is a draft document I will use to create learning objects for our learning management system.

Trying out hands on experiments is one of the perks of curriculum development

The objects will be composed in SoftChalk.   This program allows me to embed a variety of media.  The variety allows for a more personalized learning experience.  This even extends to the text on the page.  When a student clicks on a highlighted word, a definition or image will appear.

As we begin to think about a fully digitized curriculum, one of the big rules we came up with was "Device When Appropriate" or DWA.  I initially found  that my writers felt compelled to develop some digital asset for each lesson.  After talking with them about their lesson, it quickly became apparent that it was really not needed in all lessons.  In a number of lessons, it could also be a huge problem.  Think about a hands-on lesson involving water, soil, or chemicals.  One spill and you lose a computer.  Additionally, I am loathe to replace hand-on experiences with digital ones.  Experiments always work in the digital world.  Kids need to grapple with the gremlins inherit to science and engineering experimentation.

Sometimes a mirror is the best device to use

Many of you are familiar with interactive notebooks and are probably confused by the inclusion of them in my list of developed materials.   I've worked to convert teachers from a worksheet based format to interactive notebooks.  Until I can get everyone acculturated to using notebooks, I wanted to provide some training wheels.  The sample below gives you an idea of what is provided.  These pages are copied and bound in small books for each unit.

Each lesson would use two pages.  It starts on the upper left side with students being asked what they already know about the topic.  The right side constitutes the instructional side of the lesson.  At the end of the lesson, the the student is prompted to show what they now know as a result of the lesson.  The beauty of this format is teachers can see where students started and where they grew by the end of the lesson.

Lastly, perhaps the most important realization I had was the tendency of teachers to write curriculum which directs students to a single answer for a problem.  All the problems we wrote into our units are fairly open-ended in how they can be "solved".  I have attributed this tendency to twelve years of brute-force convergent thinking where all problems were solved with A,B,C,D, or E.  

A Look Back After Week One of Curriculum Development

First, let me offer my appreciation to the twenty-six members of my NGSS Transition Team that labored through the week to craft storylines, rubrics, unit outlines, and unit assessments.  My strong suggestion to anyone moving to the NGSS is to build a team of classroom teachers.  This group has worked with me since October and twenty of them will continue during curriculum writing starting on July 7.

The NGSS Transition team starts unit planning by thinking about how to reach all students.

In my last post, I discussed the unpacking document.  I can't emphasize enough how important a step this is.  It makes you really consider all three dimensions (DCI, SEP, and CC).  Once the team unpacked the PEs, they began drafting the performance based assessment using the GRASP.  

As the teams worked, I found them going back and forth revising the unpacking document as well as the PBA.   Once that process stabilized, the rubric started to evolve (insert collective groan).  Rubrics are the necessary evil of PBAs.  One tip on rubrics.  Maryland is a PARCC state so we used the four point rubric (0-3) format used throughout those assessments.  

Another tip.  Take advantage of pedagogies, templates, and vocabulary already in use rather than creating unique ones.  For example, the NGSS refers to argument in many of the performance expectations as early as Kindergarten.  The Common Core does not use argument until late elementary.  In the primary grades it is called opinion.  Yes, it is a nuance, but to elementary teachers already under intense change, any use of language they are comfortable with will gain you buy in.  At this point, buy in is really important.   We also realized with primary grades, we needed to really develop two rubrics.  One with teacher language and one with student language.  

The next step was to begin work on the unit outline.  This is where the poetry starts.  From the unpacking document,  all the enduring understandings and driving questions have to be organized to build a coherent storyline that leads to the PBA.  As I illustrated in my earlier post, the unit layout starts with students getting hooked by the scenario.  Right after that, they solve the problem as a form of performance pre-assessemnt.   As the teams worked on this outline a major obstacle had to be addressed.  After the third day of work, I reviewed the preliminary work on the unit outlines to see how they were addressing all three dimensions.  They were doing a great job writing the DCIs but the SEPs were almost absent.  This is the legacy of No Child.  We write to the content and "weave in" the process.  Alternatively, there were units that focused on the "scientific method".  So here is the book I want written:  

Learning to Do:  A Practitioners Guide to Building and Assessing the NGSS Science and Engineering Practices within Context.  

It is a working title.  

It is simply not enough to have students create an investigation, they have to be conscience of the fact that they are learning how to develop an investigation.  This is a real mind shift.  Teachers are becoming used to the hands-on side of science, but now they have to balance that with the "minds-on".  

By Friday afternoon, I had the teams evaluate their unit outlines using the EQuIP Rubric.  The preliminary evaluation shows a pretty good match.  The hard part will be when the lessons are written.  

So, in summary, here are your tips of the day.

1. Get a team.
2. Spend time unpacking the performance expectations.
3. Make sure your curriculum speaks the same language teachers and students are accustomed.  
4. Figure out how to teach the practices and not just the content.  Hands-on.  Minds-on.  

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.