Purpose and Materials Needed
“The whole of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking” - Albert Einstein
Our science ideas come from our everyday experiences starting when we are very young. Part of teaching and learning science both in and out of school is being aware of how people develop science understanding. In NextGen PET you will have specific opportunities for you to think about how people learn science and to practice skills related to teaching. The lessons in which you will learn about teaching and learning are in the Teaching and Learning
Module.
In this activity, we will introduce the Next Generation Science Standards
(NGSS) and consider how to elicit children’s ideas.
Think back on your own science learning experiences, both in this class and your experiences in elementary school, high school and college through now. Consider what you think makes good science teaching.
You may consider an activity or lesson that you think was successful at helping you learn something. Write some of your ideas down.
Share your experiences with your group members.
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In science classes, children learn many things. They learn about science ideas and they learn how science is done. They also learn ways of thinking and may develop attitudes toward science. That is, they may decide that they like or do not like science. What types of things do you think are most important for children to learn in their science classes?
Answer the clicker question about what you think is most important for children to learn in their science classes.
CQ 1-1: Of the following possibilities, choose the one you feel is most important that children learn in science classes?
A.
Skills for conducting scientific research like making careful observations.
B.
Scientific facts and vocabulary.
C.
Science knowledge that will help students understand current events such as information about nuclear power plants and genetic modifications.
D.
An understanding of how new science knowledge is developed.
E.
That science is fun.
You should have read The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and
NextGen PET as homework. It is also included at the end of this activity for your reference. Recall that the NGSS are a set of standards that describe what children in grades K-12 should be able to do at specific grade levels. The
NGSS has been adopted by many states.
The NGSS were informed by research on how children learn science and on the knowledge and skills they need to be successful after leaving school.
The standards draw on three types of knowledge (called dimensions):
1) Disciplinary core ideas
2) Science and engineering practices
3) Crosscutting concepts
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Lesson 1: Teaching and Learning Science
The type of instruction and goals of science learning described in the NGSS may look very different than science instruction you had as a student in elementary school.
In what ways do you think that your learning in science in elementary school has been similar to the type of instruction described in the NGSS?
In what ways do you think that your learning in science in elementary school has been different than the type of instruction described in the
NGSS?
Share your ideas with your group members.
In Unit M (Developing a Model of Magnetism) of NextGen PET you have been working with all three dimensions. Below we show an example of the types of ideas from each dimension included in Unit M.
Disciplinary Core
Idea (DCI)
Magnetic forces can be attractive or repulsive, and their strengths depend on the strengths of magnets involved and on the distances between the magnets.
Science and
Engineering Practices
Developing and using models.
Crosscutting
Concepts
Systems and system models. Defining the system under study—specifying its boundaries and making explicit a model of that system—provides tools for understanding and testing ideas that are applicable throughout science and engineering.
Cause and Effect: Mechanism and explanation. For example, in Unit M your model showed that when a magnet is brought near (or slid over) a nail, there are attractions and repulsions between poles (cause) that result in the little magnets in the nail to become aligned
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(effect), making the nail magnetized.
Read the following activity summaries from the three teachers below.
Ms. Rouge
Ms. Celeste
Ms. Naranja
My third grade students observed a diagram of how magnets work, showing that like poles repel and opposite poles attract. I asked them what they noticed about the diagram and to read aloud the definitions for the words “attract” and
“repel.” The students used this diagram to write a predication for what would happen if the north side of a magnet touched the north side of another magnet. They tested their hypothesis to see if their prediction was correct and wrote conclusions in their journals.
I asked my third grade students to tell me what they thought would happen if two magnets came near each other. One student said that they would always come together. Another said that she had seen them push apart. I had the students try bringing two magnets together several times to explore what happens. Then, I asked the students what happened when they brought different ends of the magnets near each other. I asked them to do what scientists do and make a table of their findings. Then, they wrote in their journal about when magnets attracted and when they repelled and we came up with a rule for how two magnets interact as a class.
First, I asked my third grade students to talk to their neighbor about where they had seen magnets before. Then, I had my students play with magnets. They had a great time sticking them together and pushing them apart. The students even took their magnets out to the sand box in the yard and collected magnetic dirt. They love playing with magnets now. Then, they wrote in their journal about their experience.
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Lesson 1: Teaching and Learning Science
All three of the teachers describe instruction about magnetism. However, they describe different experiences and scientific practices that the students engage in and practice.
Review the practices listed in the attached document The Next Generation
Science Standards (NGSS) and NextGen PET. Which practices, if any, do the students engage in in the three classrooms described by Ms. Rouge, Ms.
Celeste, and Ms. Naranja?
Ms. Rouge
Ms. Celeste
Ms. Naranja
Which teacher’s activity do you think best reflects the NGSS goals for integrating disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts?
Why?
Respond to the following clicker question.
CQ 1-3: Which of the teachers do you think taught in ways that was most like the intention of the NGSS?
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A.
Ms. Rouge
B.
Ms. Celeste
C.
Ms. Naranja
An important part of planning instruction is knowing what the students in your class already think about the science topics. In a NextGenPET class your instructor and the curriculum developers rely on research on how undergraduate students think about physics and chemistry topics as well as their own experience.
To give you some practice in identifying children’s ideas, you will be completing an out-of-class interview of children about their ideas about magnetism and trying to identify the models of magnetism that students are using.
S1: Think about the type of instruction described by the NGSS. What about the NGSS is most surprising to you?
S2. What aspects of the NGSS do you think will be challenging for teachers?
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In this assignment you will learn about the Next Generation Science
Standards (NGSS) and how they are related to the content you will be learning in NextGen PET.
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) describe what children in grades K-12 should be able to do at the conclusion of specific grade levels.
These standards are written as Performance Expectations that draw on three types of knowledge: 1) Disciplinary Core Ideas, 2) Science and Engineering
Practices, and 3) Crosscutting Concepts. This reading will help you become familiar with the NGSS.
Read through the example performance expectations below. Each includes a label of the form K-PS2-1. The first letter indicates the grade level. The “K” in
K-PS2-1 indicates that it is a Kindergarten performance expectation. The next alphanumeric group indicates the discipline (PS is Physical Science), core idea, and sub-idea.
K-PS2-1 Plan and conduct an investigation to compare the effects of different strengths or different directions of pushes and pulls on the motion of an object.
3-PS2-1
3-PS2-4
1-PS4-3
Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence of the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object.
Define a simple design problem that can be solved by applying scientific ideas about magnets.*
Plan and conduct investigations to determine the effect of placing objects made with different materials in the path of a beam of light.
1-PS4-4 Use tools and materials to design and build a devise that uses light or sound to solve the problem of communicating over a distance.*
Notice that these expectations are written as things that students do, not what they know and understand. Yet, for each of these performance expectations students must have developed some conceptual understanding. Even at the kindergarten level, K-PS2-1, asks students to plan an investigation that compares the effects of different strengths or directions of pushes on and objects motion. To do this, they must have an understanding of pushes and
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There are four physical science ideas in the NGSS, each with 3-4 sub ideas:
PS1. Matter and Its Interactions
PS1A. Structure and Properties of matter
PS1B. Chemical Reactions
PS1C. Nuclear Processes
PS2. Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions
PS2A. Forces and Motion
PS2B. Types of Interactions
PS2C. Stability and Instability in Physical Systems
PS3. Energy
PS3A. Definitions of Energy
PS3B. Conservation of Energy and Energy Transfer
PS3C. Relationships between Energy and Forces
PS3D. Energy and Chemical Processes in Everyday Life
PS4. Waves and Their Applications in Technology for Information Transfer
PS4A. Wave Properties
PS4B. Electromagnetic Radiation
PS4C. Information Technologies and Instrumentation
As you work through the activities and Modules in NextGen PET, you should be able to see how your work is related to the four large ideas above. Take a look at the table of contents for the module(s) you will be completing and try to match the disciplinary core ideas above with activities in NextGen PET that you anticipate will address these disciplinary core ideas.
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) describe eight practices of science and engineering. These are things that scientists and engineers do when they are doing science. The chart below (NRC, 2012) describes how the practices look in science and engineering. The goals of science and engineering are different. The goal of science is to explain natural phenomenon and to support these explanations with evidence. The goal of engineering is to identify problems that humans face and to solve these
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Lesson 1: Teaching and Learning Science problems through the invention and development of objects or processes. The processes by which these goals are met are similar.
1.
Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering).
2.
Developing and using models.
3.
Planning and carrying out investigations.
4.
Analyzing and interpreting data.
5.
Using mathematics and computational thinking.
6.
Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering).
7.
Engaging in argument from evidence.
8.
Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information.
NextGen PET is designed so that as you learn about physics and chemistry in this course, you will also be engaging in some of the science and engineering practices. Some of these practices will be used throughout the entire course and others you will see used in a more focused way in specific modules.
The third strand of the Next Generation Science Standards are crosscutting concepts. These are ideas that bridge the science disciplines. While we do not explicitly focus on crosscutting concepts in NextGen PET, you may notice that the ideas come up in both the Physics and Chemistry Modules. There are seven crosscutting concepts:
1.
Patterns
2.
Cause and Effect: Mechanism and explanation,
3.
Scale, proportion, and quantity,
4.
Systems and system models,
5.
Energy and matter: Flows, cycles, and conservation
6.
Structure and function, and
7.
Stability and change.
National Research Council. (2012). A Framework for K-12 Science Education:
Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. Washington, DC: The
National Academies Press.
Achieve (2012). Next Generation Science Standards. Available at http://www.nextgenscience.org/
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