If you’re charged with helping educators achieve the vision of the new science standards, this is the professional development resource you need. This book is chock-full of activities and useful advice for guiding teachers and administrators as they put the standards into practice in the classroom. Written by three experts in professional development for science teachers, Introducing Teachers and Administrators to the NGSS • Introduces the vocabulary, structure, and conceptual shifts of the NGSS • Explores the three dimensions of the Framework—science and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas—and how they’re integrated in the NGSS • Provides classroom case studies of instructional approaches for students challenged by traditional science teaching • Covers curricular decisions involving course mapping, designing essential questions and performance assessments, and using the NGSS to plan units of instruction • Examines the connections between the NGSS and the Common Core State Standards • Offers advice for getting past common professional development sticking points and finding further resources Given the widespread changes in today’s education landscape, teachers and administrators may feel overwhelmed by the prospect of putting the new standards into practice. If you’re a science specialist, curriculum coordinator, or instructional coach who provides professional development, you will find this collection immensely helpful for heading off “initiative fatigue,” whether in an individual school or throughout a district.

Written for everyone from teachers to school administrators to district and state science coordinators, this resource offers essential guidance on how the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) standards fit with your curriculum, instruction, and assessments.

A Framework for K-12 Science Education and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) describe a new vision for science learning and teaching that is catalyzing improvements in science classrooms across the United States. Achieving this new vision will require time, resources, and ongoing commitment from state, district, and school leaders, as well as classroom teachers. Successful implementation of the NGSS will ensure that all K-12 students have high-quality opportunities to learn science. Guide to Implementing the Next Generation Science Standards provides guidance to district and school leaders and teachers charged with developing a plan and implementing the NGSS as they change their curriculum, instruction, professional learning, policies, and assessment to align with the new standards. For each of these elements, this report lays out recommendations for action around key issues and cautions about potential pitfalls. Coordinating changes in these aspects of the education system is challenging. As a foundation for that process, Guide to Implementing the Next Generation Science Standards identifies some overarching principles that should guide the planning and implementation process. The new standards present a vision of science and engineering learning designed to bring these subjects alive for all students, emphasizing the satisfaction of pursuing compelling questions and the joy of discovery and invention. Achieving this vision in all science classrooms will be a major undertaking and will require changes to many aspects of science education. Guide to Implementing the Next Generation Science Standards will be a valuable resource for states, districts, and schools charged with planning and implementing changes, to help them achieve the goal of teaching science for the 21st century.

It's challenging to teach science well to all students while connecting your lessons to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This unique book portrays real teaching scenarios written by the teachers on the NGSS Diversity and Equity Team. The seven authentic case studies vividly illustrate research- and standards-based classroom strategies you can use to engage seven diverse demographic groups: - Economically disadvantaged students - Students from major racial and ethnic groups - Students with disabilities - English language learners - Girls - Students in alternative education - Gifted and talented students Supplementing the case studies are additional chapters to deepen your understanding of the strategies and make what you learn more usable. These chapters address how to design units with the NGSS and diversity in mind, apply a rubric to improve your teaching using the NGSS with diverse student groups, and use the case studies in teacher study groups. Furthermore, leaders of the NGSS-- including Helen Quinn, Stephen Pruitt, André s Henrí quez, and Joe Krajcik-- offer their insights and commitments to diversity and equity. NGSS for All Students will help you make the instructional shifts necessary to prepare all your students for college and careers.

Science, engineering, and technology permeate nearly every facet of modern life and hold the key to solving many of humanity's most pressing current and future challenges. The United States' position in the global economy is declining, in part because U.S. workers lack fundamental knowledge in these fields. To address the critical issues of U.S. competitiveness and to better prepare the workforce, A Framework for K-12 Science Education proposes a new approach to K-12 science education that will capture students' interest and provide them with the necessary foundational knowledge in the field. A Framework for K-12 Science Education outlines a broad set of expectations for students in science and engineering in grades K-12. These expectations will inform the development of new standards for K-12 science education and, subsequently, revisions to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for educators. This book identifies three dimensions that convey the core ideas and practices around which science and engineering education in these grades should be built. These three dimensions are: crosscutting concepts that unify the study of science through their common application across science and engineering; scientific and engineering practices; and disciplinary core ideas in the physical sciences, life sciences, and earth and space sciences and for engineering, technology, and the applications of science. The overarching goal is for all high school graduates to have sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on science-related issues, be careful consumers of scientific and technical information, and enter the careers of their choice. A Framework for K-12 Science Education is the first step in a process that can inform state-level decisions and achieve a research-grounded basis for improving science instruction and learning across the country. The book will guide standards developers, teachers, curriculum designers, assessment developers, state and district science administrators, and educators who teach science in informal environments.

Currently, many states are adopting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) or are revising their own state standards in ways that reflect the NGSS. For students and schools, the implementation of any science standards rests with teachers. For those teachers, an evolving understanding about how best to teach science represents a significant transition in the way science is currently taught in most classrooms and it will require most science teachers to change how they teach. That change will require learning opportunities for teachers that reinforce and expand their knowledge of the major ideas and concepts in science, their familiarity with a range of instructional strategies, and the skills to implement those strategies in the classroom. Providing these kinds of learning opportunities in turn will require profound changes to current approaches to supporting teachers' learning across their careers, from their initial training to continuing professional development. A teacher's capability to improve students' scientific understanding is heavily influenced by the school and district in which they work, the community in which the school is located, and the larger professional communities to which they belong. Science Teachers' Learning provides guidance for schools and districts on how best to support teachers' learning and how to implement successful programs for professional development. This report makes actionable recommendations for science teachers' learning that take a broad view of what is known about science education, how and when teachers learn, and education policies that directly and indirectly shape what teachers are able to learn and teach. The challenge of developing the expertise teachers need to implement the NGSS presents an opportunity to rethink professional learning for science teachers. Science Teachers' Learning will be a valuable resource for classrooms, departments, schools, districts, and professional organizations as they move to new ways to teach science.

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.