In Spring of 2016, TUSD middle school science teachers began to dive deep into the NGSS in preparation for the following school year. We knew that we were about to begin transitioning and that it was going to be a daunting task, but many did not actually realize that the California Department of Education had already begun this process for us. The CA Science Framework developed by the CDE, not only provided instructional segments that grouped the Performance Expectations into a logical integrated approach, but provided narratives and vignettes to help teachers begin to understand the instructional shifts required to meet the requirements of the NGSS.
However, as I began to read the CA Framework for NGSS, I realized that this was a lot to absorb and difficult to process the way it was presented all in one file. I began simplifying what was presented in the CA Framework to chunk the information to make it more accessible to teachers. The first products of this process were the storylines. These were adapted directly from the tables of information provided in the CDE NGSS Framework. I did add some color coding to help differentiate the standards and PEs that we were expected to teach in the 16-17 school year and those that we could wait on teaching until the 17-18 school year according to the TUSD transition plan timeline. Although we were not required to teach all the standards in the 16-17 school year, I quickly realized that we must find a way to look at the end curriculum goal in order to use the research-based approach of backwards planning for curriculum design. Knowing that this was going to take many hours of working with the standards and professional development training for teachers, I began by just getting teachers and administrators to talk about the NGSS Storylines for middle school science as linked below. 6th Grade Integrated Storyline 7th Grade Integrated Storyline 8th Grade Integrated Storyline This is where it all began. I was then asked by the teachers and principal of Columbus Tustin Middle School to help get teachers ready for this major transition during a planning day to prepare for the following year. I worked closely with the instructional coach at Columbus Tustin, Delia Racines, Ph.D., to figure out a plan to help teachers process the CA Framework and a strategy to begin sequencing the standards. The training went so well, that we were asked by Ed Services to provide this same professional development training to all of the teachers at every middle school in TUSD. Thus far, the most important part of our transition has been that every teacher participated in this professional development training. It was imperative that they physically worked with and understood how we sequenced the standards so that they could read the sequences developed by the other sites. Each school site sequenced two units or "instructional segments" of the CA Framework and I worked throughout the summer months to digitize all of the information in preparation to share the work at the start of the 16-17 school year.
2 Comments
Kyndra McGregory
11/20/2017 11:21:00 am
Hello,
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Cari Wiliams
11/21/2017 07:10:08 pm
It is best if you can find a way to integrate all three domains around a driving questions for what I am calling a unit and what the CDE Framework calls an instructional segment. The driving question should be broad enough that you could interweave concepts from all three domains. However, most units are heavy in one domain as the concepts are related. But there is always a way to connect the topic of study to each domain even if it is just briefly.
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December 2021
AuthorCari 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 |