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.