NSTA (Nashville) 2016 - My Three Biggest Take-Aways:

• Literacy is a crucial part of learning and demonstrating learning of science within NGSS. Literacy involves comprehending and communicating ideas through explanations that use evidence to support claims. Students should have opportunities within science learning to interact with information (text, models, discussions) purposefully to support understanding of disciplinary core ideas and scientific practices. Since the NGSS were designed with the intent to engage all students in science, our responsibility as educators involves selecting the appropriate strategies for supporting literacy skills for our students so that all students have the opportunity to demonstrate understanding of science through explanations, discussions, and practices (higher order thinking). NGSS means we must look less at learning outcomes as closed-ended but rather skill sets and habits of mind that students can apply to other areas of their lives but were learned through science. This may mean placing less value on simply having students demonstrate that they know something and more on how well they are able to do something with what they know.
• NGSS came about because the way we teach science needs to be updated to the way science is understood and applied at the college and career level. In order to develop these skills (DCI, SEP, XCC) we need to think deeply about what NGSS means and how our lessons actually support the three dimensions. Teachers may need to go through a process of “conceptual change” to accept the idea that NGSS means something very different and more complex than any previous standards. While knowledge is still valued within the dimension of disciplinary core ideas, other aspects of doing science must also be valued. The other two dimensions are about the skills and habits of mind related to doing science (science and engineering practices) and thinking about science (crosscutting concepts). By engaging our science classrooms effectively in the three dimensions, we support our students in becoming people that can make sense of phenomena and design solutions to problems. These are skills that every student can benefit from and supports college and career readiness. The performance expectations clearly only stipulate what students are able to do and not how we’re suppose to teach, As educators, our job now is to use our knowledge and expertise to look for the strategies that support the three dimensions. Before we can do this, we must think deeply about what the three dimensions mean, how they are different then what we have done in the past and how they interplay with each other. This invites a long and arduous journey within science education (that is very exciting!).
• Crosscutting concepts are ways of thinking about science and can be used as lenses through which we explain phenomena in nature. Student thinking can be made visible by utilizing crosscutting concepts as tools for students to explain how things happen. Crosscutting concepts have been underrated and have been approached as an after-though of the NGSS/three dimensions. Crosscutting concepts have always existed in the field of science (may be referred to as themes), and have been identified long before NGSS but were never incorporated into the way we teach science.

All of this means we have an opportunity to make science teaching better in that we can better prepare all students for college and career, and NGSS is a tool that will allow us to do that.