Environmental Education and the Next Generation Science Standards

1. 2013 NEEEA and Sustainable Schools Summit Newport, RI Environmental Education and the Next Generation Science Standards Peter J. McLaren Science and Technology Specialist Rhode Island Department of Education

2. A drink from a firehose!

3. Agenda • How were the NGSS developed? • The process • The role of research • What’s different about the NGSS? • The three dimensions • The involvement of states • What does a standard look like? • Conceptual shifts • What do the NGSS look like? • How can I use the NGSS? • Where can we find NGSS resources?

4. How were the NGSS developed?

5. How Well Do I Understand the NGSS? How well do you know the Common Core? I don’t. Should I? I’ve heard of the NGSS, but don’t really know how it impacts students. I’m familiar with the NGSS, but I have questions and would like more specifics. I’m very familiar with the NGSS. I may be able to help others understand what it is and its impact.

6. Developing the Standards – A Partnership

7. Next Generation Science Standards: Building on the Past; Preparing for the Future 1990s-2009 Step I Step II 1990s 7/2011 – April, 2013 1/2010 - 7/2011

8. A State–Led Process: NGSS Lead State Partners

9. NGSS Writers Distribution

10. What’s Different About These Standards?

11. A Framework for K-12 Science Education Three-Dimensions: • Scientific and Engineering Practices • Crosscutting Concepts • Disciplinary Core Ideas Download FREE PDF of Framework at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13165

12. Vision For Science Education “The Framework is designed to help realize a vision for education in the sciences and engineering in which (all) students, over multiple years of school, actively engage in science and engineering practices and apply crosscutting concepts to deepen their understanding of the core ideas in these fields.” A Framework for K-12 Science Education, pp. 8 - 9

13. Vision of the Framework Standards and performance expectations that are aligned to the framework must take into account that students cannot fully understand scientific and engineering ideas without engaging in the practices of inquiry and the discourses by which such ideas are developed and refined. At the same time, they cannot learn or show competence in practices except in the context of specific content. A Framework for K-12 Science Education, p. 218

14. Goals for Teaching & Learning Crosscutting Concepts Core Ideas Practices Performance Expectation • Coherent investigations of core ideas across multiple years of schooling • More seamless blending of practices with core ideas • Performance expectations that require reasoning with core disciplinary ideas • explain, justify, predict, model, describe, prove, solve, illustrate, argue, etc.

15. Dimension 1: Scientific and Engineering Practices • Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering) • Developing and using models • Planning and carrying out investigations • Analyzing and interpreting data • Using mathematics and computational thinking • Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering) • Engaging in argument from evidence • Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

16. Comparison Excellence In Environmental Education Guidelines for Learning Strand 1 - Questioning, Analysis and Interpretation Skills • Questioning • Designing Investigations • Collecting information • Evaluating accuracy and reliability • Organizing information • Working with models and simulations • Drawing conclusions and developing explanations Strand 3 - Skills for Understanding and Addressing Environmental Issues Strand 4 - Personal and Civic Responsibility NGSS Practices • Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering) • Developing and using models • Planning and carrying out investigations • Analyzing and interpreting data • Using mathematics and computational thinking • Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering) • Engaging in argument from evidence • Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

17. Science and Engineering Practices- Not just Teaching Strategies • Science and Engineering Practices are how scientific knowledge is acquired; • Students can only fully understand scientific and engineering ideas by engaging in the practices of inquiry and the discourses; • While Practices should be used in instruction, all students need to demonstrate achievement in their use and application • Use of practices naturally lend themselves to formative assessment of learning and understanding

18. Patterns Cause and effect: Mechanism and explanation Scale, proportion, and quantity Systems and system models Energy and matter: Flows, cycles, and conservation Structure and function Stability and change Dimension 2: Crosscutting Concepts

20. Crosscutting Concepts

21. Dimension 3: Disciplinary Core Ideas

22. Influence of Engineering, Technology, and Science on Society and the Natural World NGSS Appendix J

24. Some examples of engineering integrated into NGSS MS-LS2-5. Evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services.* [Clarification Statement: Examples of ecosystem services could include water purification, nutrient recycling, and prevention of soil erosion. Examples of design solution constraints could include scientific, economic, and social considerations.] MS-ESS3-3. Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.* [Clarification Statement: Examples of the design process include examining human environmental impacts, assessing the kinds of solutions that are feasible, and designing and evaluating solutions that could reduce that impact. Examples of human impacts can include water usage (such as the withdrawal of water from streams and aquifers or the construction of dams and levees), land usage (such as urban development, agriculture, or the removal of wetlands), and pollution (such as of the air, water, or land).] HS-ESS3-4. Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.*[Clarification Statement: Examples of data on the impacts of human activities could include the quantities and types of pollutants released, changes to biomass and species diversity, or areal changes in land surface use (such as for urban development, agriculture and livestock, or surface mining). Examples for limiting future impacts could range from local efforts (such as reducing, reusing, and recycling resources) to large-scale geoengineering design solutions (such as altering global temperatures by making large changes to the atmosphere or ocean).]

25. Environmental Education as a Means of Delivery of NGSS

27. Interdisciplinarity & Transferability • Learning progressions described in Framework – climate is embedded from K-12 in all domains of science – not just specific domains • S&EP and CC not only cut across all of the Core Disciplinary Ideas they are also relevant in many other disciplines – outside the sciences • The skills students gain by having their curriculum address the S&EP and CC are transferable to many other careers

28. What does a standard look like?

30. Developing and Using Models • Modeling in 6–8 builds on K–5 experiences and progresses to developing, using, and revising models to describe, test, and predict more abstract phenomena and design systems. • Develop and use a model to describe phenomena. (MS-ESS2-6) • Systems and System Models • Models can be used to represent systems and their interactions—such as inputs, processes and outputs—and energy, matter, and information flows within systems. (MS-ESS2-6) • ESS2.C: The Roles of Water in Earth’s Surface Processes • Variations in density due to variations in temperature and salinity drive a global pattern of interconnected ocean currents. (MS-ESS2-6) • ESS2.D: Weather and Climate • Weather and climate are influenced by interactions involving sunlight, the ocean, the atmosphere, ice, landforms, and living things. These interactions vary with latitude, altitude, and local and • regional geography, all of which can affect oceanic and atmospheric flow patterns. (MS-ESS2-6) • The ocean exerts a major influence on weather and climate by absorbing energy from the sun, releasing it over time, and globally redistributing it through ocean currents. (MS-ESS2-6)

31. What questions would lead students to investigations to support student understanding of this Performance Expectation? Develop and use a model to describe how unequal heating and rotation of the Earth cause patterns of atmospheric and oceanic circulation that determine regional climates. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on how patterns vary by latitude, altitude, and geographic land distribution. Emphasis of atmospheric circulation is on the sunlight-driven latitudinal banding, the Coriolis effect, and resulting prevailing winds; emphasis of ocean circulation is on the transfer of heat by the global ocean convection cycle, which is constrained by the Coriolis effect and the outlines of continents. Examples of models can be diagrams, maps and globes, or digital representations.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include the dynamics of the Coriolis effect.]

32. To Build Instruction from this PE… • What investigations could be designed around the Disciplinary Core Ideas for students to build upon their understanding? • What practices would be used within these investigations to engage students? • How can crosscutting concepts be used to make connections across disciplines?

33. Develop and use a model to describe how unequal heating and rotation of the Earth cause patterns of atmospheric and oceanic circulation that determine regional climates. Questions Investigations Explanations How does temperature and salinity affect density? Lab investigations of temp and salinity of water. Water molecules expand…hold more salt…becomes more dense How does the rotation of the Earth cause currents? Rotation causes a force that is creates at the poles and least at equator (Coriolis Effect) Models. Computer Simulations How does the ocean release energy absorbed by the sun? Lab investigations, Computer simulations Mechanical Energy (waves) Thermal energy (wind) What do the patterns of ocean currents tell us? Analyze data. Computer models Relation between wind currents and equator heated and polar cooled “conveyor belt” What causes winds? Simulations. Models Uneven heating and cooling between land and ocean

34. Let’s see what this might look like in the classroom? 5-PS1-1. Develop a model to describe that matter is made of particles too small to be seen. [Clarification Statement: Examples of evidence could include adding air to expand a basketball, compressing air in a syringe, dissolving sugar in water, and evaporating salt water.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include the atomic-scale mechanism of evaporation and condensation or defining the unseen particles.]

35. What does developing models look like in the classroom?

38. Fused Knowledge (Songer, 2012) Core Disciplinary /Crosscutting: the relationship between the temperature and the total energy of a system depends on the types, states, and amounts of matter present. PracticePose models to describe mechanisms at unobservable scales. Fused Knowledge (C+P) Students use a simulation model to address the question, How does the energy of a system affect the temperature of a substance?

39. Instructional Bundling – MS Earth and Space Science Instructional Unit: Weather and Climate • Instructional Units should be developed with these performances as the end point or target. • Instruction should also connect these performances with the Disciplinary Core Idea ESS3: Earth and Human Activity ESS2: Earth’s Systems MS-ESS2-5. Collect data to provide evidence for how the motions and complex interactions of air masses results in changes in weather conditions. MS-ESS2-6. Develop and use a model to describe how unequal heating and rotation of the Earth’ cause patterns of atmospheric and oceanic circulation that determine regional climates. MS-ESS3-5. Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.

40. Progressing to Understanding • Students develop understanding over time • Standards are developed cohesively NGSS Appendix E

41. Quality Instruction in the NGSS • Pairing Practice with Disciplinary Core Idea are necessary to define a discrete set of blended standards, but should not be viewed as the only combinations that appear in instructional materials • Quality instruction (and instructional materials) must be able to flexibly apply the science practices students need to experience their use, separately and in combination, in multiple disciplinary contexts. • The Practices are inextricably interlinked • While the NGSS couples single practice with content, this is intended to be clear about the Practice sampled within that context • Quality materials and instruction cannot isolate a single practice with a single piece of content.

42. Standards, Curriculum, and Instruction Standards Assessment • Emphasis on classroom formative and summative assessment • Learning goals • Adopted by the state Curriculum • Plans for meeting standards • Developed/adopted locally Instruction • Strategies teachers use to promote student understanding • Implemented in the classroom

43. Degree of Grain Size

44. Develop Understanding of Core Ideas,Not Lessons • Successful classroom implementation of the NGSS will require students to understand and apply the Disciplinary Core Ideas, Science and Engineering Practice, and Crosscutting Concepts through the development of ideas across time. • Successful implementation of the NGSS will require viewing instruction and assessment as the “bundling” of performance expectations into coherent lessons and assessments • Unsuccessful classroom implementation of the NGSS will continue the use of the three dimensions as separate entities and lessons. • Unsuccessful implementation will reflect individual practices and performance expectations as standalone lessons or units

45. Words of Advice • Teaching, or attempting to teach, individual performance expectations lead to a disjointed and stunted view of science. • Developing instructional materials and instruction should be viewed as leading to understanding the larger core idea • Coherent instructional materials and instruction should focus on a Disciplinary Core Idea (or set of them) rather than discrete pieces that are never tied together.

46. Making the Transition

47. Conceptual Shifts in the NGSS • K-12 Science education should reflect the interconnected Nature of Science as it is practiced and experienced in the real world. • The Next Generation Science Standards are student performance expectations – NOTcurriculum. • The science concepts build coherently from K-12. • The NGSS focus on deeper understanding of content as well as application of content. • Science and Engineering are integrated in the NGSS from K–12. • NGSS content is focused on preparing students for the next generation workforce. • The NGSS and Common Core State Standards ( English Language Arts and Mathematics) are aligned.

48. Systems of Science Education Affected by Implementation of NGSS • Curriculum • Instruction • Assessment • Materials and Resources • Professional Development • Pre-Service Education and Higher Ed Arts and Sciences • Informal Education • Inclusion of Business

49. Rhode Island’s Transition to the NGSS Adoption Transition Full Implementation May, 2013: The Rhode Island Board of Education adopt the NGSS SY2013-2016: RI districts and schools begin to revise curriculum and instruction SY2016-2017: All RI schools are using new standards We are here.

50. Appendices for the NGSS A Conceptual Shifts B Responses to May Public Feedback C College and Career Readiness DAll Standards, All Students EDisciplinary Core Idea Progressions in the NGSS FScience and Engineering Practices in the NGSS GCrosscutting Concepts in the NGSS HNature of Science in the NGSS IEngineering Design in the NGSS J Science, Technology, Society, and the Environment KModel Course Mapping in Middle and High School L Connections to Common Core State Standards in Mathematics M Connections to Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts