Science

As science teachers implement NGSS in their classrooms, they are running into issues with administrator/district requirements for publically posting the daily learning target, objective, or standard in the classroom. 

What Is The Issue?

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) shifted to a student-centered approach to learning by co-constructing learning targets with students as they figure out shared phenomena and learn through hands-on investigations.  Starting with this shared experience that encourages student questions allows for learning to be co-constructed. The teacher’s “secret” is that when phenomena is academically productive, the teacher knows the end goal: the objectives, and standards that will be met within the unit. “Displaying the target concept to be learned—the disciplinary core idea that is the focus of instruction—“gives away” what students should actually be figuring out as they make sense of phenomena by engaging in the science and engineering practices. It is important for teachers and administrators to come to consensus around developing and using objectives that are consistent with 3D learning.” (STEM Teaching Tool- Brief 46) 

A tool to help this discussion is STEM Teaching Tool #46. It does an excellent job of offering suggestions around how to define meaningful daily learning objectives for science investigations as well as suggestions for building and district leaders to consider. 

Quick Tips for administrators- What to look for:

Don’t Ask: What standard are you teaching today?

Ask: What phenomenon are students making sense of? How are they figuring this out?

What about posting objectives?

What to look for…

• Descriptions of which Science and Engineering Practices and Cross-Cutting Concepts students will engage with.

• A question about what students are figuring out

What not to look for…

• The full text of the performance expectation (standard)

• Content students will know (i.e. define three parts of a cell)

(Achieve.org, Admin Cheat Sheet)

How educators frame a learning experience or unit is critical when the goal is to achieve deeper learning through authentic experiences.