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    The NSTA Quick-Reference Guide to the NGSS, Middle School
    The NSTA Quick-Reference Guide to the NGSS, Middle School
    The NSTA Quick-Reference Guide to the NGSS, Middle School
    Ebook205 pages1 hour

    The NSTA Quick-Reference Guide to the NGSS, Middle School

    By Ted Willard

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    About this ebook

    Since the release of the first draft of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), NSTA has been at the forefront in promoting the standards and helping science educators become familiar with and learn to navigate this exciting but complex document. Later, when the final version was released and states began adopting the standards, NSTA started to develop resources that would assist educators with their implementation.
    Along the way, NSTA learned that even the simplest of resources, like a one-page cheat sheet, can be extremely useful. Many of those tools are collected here, including
    • a two-page “ cheat sheet” that describes the practices, core ideas, and crosscutting concepts that make up the three dimensions described in A Framework for K 12 Science Education;
    • an “ Inside the Box” graphic that spells out all of the individual sections of text that appear on a page of the NGSS;
    • a Venn diagram comparing the practices in NGSS, Common Core State Standards, Mathematics, and Common Core State Standards, English Language Arts; and
    • matrices showing how the NGSS are organized by topic and disciplinary core idea.
    This guide also provides the appropriate performance expectations; disciplinary core ideas; practices; crosscutting concepts; connections to engineering, technology, and applications of science; and connections to nature of science. It is designed to be used with the NGSS.
    The NSTA Quick-Reference Guides to the NGSS are also available in grade-specific versions— one each for elementary and high school— plus a comprehensive K-12 edition. The four Quick-Reference Guides are indispensable to science teachers at all levels, as well as to administrators, curriculum developers, and teacher educators.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNSTA
    Release dateOct 1, 2014
    ISBN9781941316887
    The NSTA Quick-Reference Guide to the NGSS, Middle School

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      Book preview

      The NSTA Quick-Reference Guide to the NGSS, Middle School - Ted Willard

      CHAPTER 1

      Basics of NGSS

      Three Dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

      Science and Engineering Practices*

      Science and Engineering Practice 1: Asking Questions and Defining Problems

      Questions are the engine that drive science and engineering.

      Science asks

      •What exists and what happens?

      •Why does it happen?

      •How does one know?

      Engineering asks

      •What can be done to address a particular human need or want?

      •How can the need be better specified?

      •What tools and technologies are available, or could be developed, for addressing this need?

      Both science and engineering ask

      •How does one communicate about phenomena, evidence, explanations, and design solutions?

      Asking questions is essential to developing scientific habits of mind. Even for individuals who do not become scientists or engineers, the ability to ask well-defined questions is an important component of science literacy, helping to make them critical consumers of scientific knowledge.

      Scientific questions arise in a variety of ways. They can be driven by curiosity about the world (e.g., Why is the sky blue?). They can be inspired by a model’s or theory’s predictions or by attempts to extend or refine a model or theory (e.g., How does the particle model of matter explain the incompressibility of liquids?). Or they can result from the need to provide better solutions to a problem. For example, the question of why it is impossible to siphon water above a height of 32 feet led Evangelista Torricelli (17th-century inventor of the barometer) to his discoveries about the atmosphere and the identification of a vacuum.

      Questions are also important in engineering. Engineers must be able to ask probing questions in order to define an engineering problem. For example, they may ask: What is the need or desire that underlies the problem? What are the criteria (specifications) for a successful solution? What are the constraints? Other questions arise when generating possible solutions: Will this solution meet the design criteria? Can two or more ideas be combined to produce a better solution? What are the possible trade-offs? And more questions arise when testing solutions: Which ideas should be tested? What evidence is needed to show which idea is optimal under the given constraints?

      The experience of learning science and engineering should therefore develop students’ ability to ask—and indeed, encourage them to ask—well-formulated questions that can be investigated empirically. Students also need to recognize the distinction between questions that can be answered empirically and those that are answerable only in other domains of knowledge or human experience.

      GOALS

      By grade 12, students should be able to

      •Ask questions about the natural and human-built worlds—for example: Why are there seasons? What do bees do? Why did that structure collapse? How is electric power generated?

      •Distinguish a scientific question (e.g., Why do helium balloons rise?) from a nonscientific question (Which of these colored balloons is the prettiest?).

      •Formulate and refine questions that can be answered empirically in a science classroom and use them to design an inquiry or construct a pragmatic solution.

      •Ask probing questions that seek to identify the premises of an argument, request further elaboration, refine a research question

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