Phenomena Do Not Need to Be PhenomenalPhenomena are occurrences in the natural and human-made world that can be observed and cause one to wonder and ask questions. Phenomena-based instruction is a focus of the NGSS and means that teachers present a phenomenon to students before they begin their learning journey on a topic or set of concepts. Ideally, teachers will return to this phenomena throughout the students' learning journey to help them become aware of and revise their thinking. Using phenomena in this way also allows the teacher to access students' prior knowledge, get a formative check for understanding, uncover misconceptions, and introduce questions to lead into lessons and activities. It also allows teachers to emphasize cross cutting concepts that may be a focus of that learning progression. With the many shifts we are making as we transition to the NGSS, I have seen teachers struggle with knowing when it is the right time to revisit a phenomenon and finding good phenomenon that best fits the learning progression. However, the phenomena do not need to be phenomenal! Teachers should not worry if they have don't have the perfect phenomena, because we can always change what we present as the phenomena over the years. Just like we will continue to revise and improve the curriculum, we will continue to revise and improve the phenomena we present to students. So don't worry if your phenomenon is not phenomenal, just begin the shift to using phenomena-based instruction and we will all get better at this over the next several years! Anchoring vs Investigative PhenomenaMy biggest takeaway from day 1 of the CA NGSS Rollout #4 is the difference between anchoring and investigative phenomena. Below summarizes some of the information presented:
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Anchoring Phenomenon Unit 1:
| Investigative Phenomenon Assessment 1.1:
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After Thinking More About it..... (update July 2017)
I have been thinking about the topic of this blog post for some time and have come up with a few conclusions:
- The four "Units" found in each grade level sequence are too broad to really find an anchoring phenomenon that can be used to anchor the learning. There are just too many concepts found within each unit to find a single phenomenon to cover them all.
- Each learning progression is a series of lessons that should begin with an anchoring phenomenon and revisited throughout the learning progression. Additional investigative phenomenon should be integrated at the lesson level.
- The piktochart I originally made as shown above for anchoring phenomena, is a good way to explicitly teach the idea of systems and subsystems throughout the unit. More on this in the next blog post.....
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Cari Williams has been developing her understanding of The Framework for K-12 Science Teaching and the NGSS through the development of curriculum, collaborative learning experiences with NSTA 3D Learning Cadre Members and as a Science Peer Review Panelist for Achieve. To learn more, please go to
cariwilliamz.weebly.com