An Elementary Journey to the Next Generation Science Standards

Small Group Instruction in Elementary Science

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 02:17:00 +0000

This one has been a long time in coming. It has taken me awhile to sort out the ideas. Many of you are familiar with small group instruction in reading and math. This type of small, needs-based grouping is an essential element in most elementary classrooms. However, when I was asked to consider this same idea for elementary science, it was uncharted territory. Sure, we've all done group work. Everyone builds the same windmill or does the same experiment. I need to be clear. The goal is to have each group or each student working on something that meets their needs. Before you go and get the pitchforks and torches, I am not advocating for there to be multiple hands-on experiments going on at the same time. That would create a potentially unsafe environment. Someone would lose an eyebrow.

However, consider this, what if we grouped students by their needs in science by using the results of rigorous pre-assessment. In my world, that is a combination of traditional multiple choice and constructed response type questions which needs to include questions on prior knowledge. It would also include some sort of performance based pre-assessment. These performance pre-assessments would emulate the end of unit performance assessment.

In our NGSS curriculum, these are either a physical object and in some cases it is based on developing an explanation (verbal or written). In either case, the result is the teacher receives data on what the students already know. This then allows students to be grouped based on their needs. For the most part, this would only impact the depth and complexity of the final product the group creates. What we must avoid is the age old trap of grouping kids so that there is a "leader" in the group who can teach the rest of the students. Where is this "leaders" opportunity to grow? Let's also be honest in the probability that this leader does most of the work for the other students. Where is there opportunity to learn?

Part two goes from the group level to the individual student. One of the main benefits to going one-to-one is the capacity to serve out a variety of learning objects (video, audio, image, interactive media, etc.) A number of vendors produce products of this type, but I painted myself into somewhat of a corner. With my dogged insistence on locally relevant storylines, no one provider produces learning objects specific to the needs of our curriculum.

With many of the units, I have created eBooks which package related content into one learning object. I have used a package called SoftChalk. It is essentially a WYSIWYG webpage creation tool. I am able to find and organize content from our providers and external sources. These eBooks also help reduce teacher workload. Rather than ten learning objects a teacher has to send to students, they only have to send one. Students can then choose the object they need to understand the concepts. A recent update also includes the capacity to give students immediate feedback on embedded quizzes. For each multiple choice answer, a specific learning object can be identified to provide students with the content they need at that moment.

This is a far as I have gotten so far. Would love to her other ideas.

How Big a Splash Does a Rock Four Kilometers in Diameter Make?

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 01:57:00 +0000

When I started writing curriculum, I was told to tell a story. The lessons needed to be joined together in a coherent storyline. The theory was that students would learn more if they knew how the concepts were linked together. In the age of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), this idea is amplified further with the addition of engineering design challenges. Not only do the lessons need to connect, but they need to connect towards solving a problem. As an example, I will walk you through a unit was just updated.

The performance expectations for this unit are from the grade four topic page "Earth Systems: Processes that Shape the Earth". Maryland has some diverse geological features, but rarely do we have any that cause a disaster. In 2011, we did have an earthquake that registered 5.8 on the Richter Scale. That is pretty much an extreme for us. So, if I wanted to have local natural disaster, I would have to get creative.

As it turns out, Maryland has had some significant geological events. The most significant happened 35 million years ago. A bolide roughly four kilometers across smashed into the shallow waters in what would be the southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula. The super heated winds created a hypercane which vaporized everything within 1000 km. The splash resulted in a tsunami which traveled to the Appalachian Mountains.

The story of the crater's discovery played very well into the performance expectation on changes in landscape over time. The crater cannot readily be seen on the surface. After 35 million years, erosion and sedimentation have erased most of the evidence (4-ESS2-1 and 4-ESS2-2). Some of the conclusive evidence which identified the age of the impact conveniently was the result of fossil evidence (4-ESS1-1). That leaves students having to develop ways to minimize the impact of Earth's natural processes.

Now, what I originally wanted to do was have students plan for another meteor impact. In 2880, another meteor is projected to come close enough to Earth where it MAY impact. NASA has some great simulations showing the potential for an Atlantic impact. However, apparently nine year olds would be sensitive to that even though it is well into the future. So, I had to find an oxymoron- a non-threatening natural disaster. As it turns out, the Canary Islands provide one.

The island of La Palma has a slab of rock that may slide off into the ocean and cause a tsunami wave which could impact Maryland. There was a story picked up by the media several years ago that over hyped a projected model. A great lesson in science all by itself.

After discussing how models can be used improperly, we talk about more realistic impacts from waves and equate them to some of the hurricane storm surges Maryland gets. We go from mega-disaster to survivable threat. The students are then tasked with build a tsunami resistant house. I really liked the version from Teach Engineering. I did modify the design a bit. I went with a 1'x1' ceramic tile as my wave generator rather than a piece of sheet metal duct taped to the bottom of the tub. Also, rather than pushing the tile down, I pull up. It produces a much more consistent wave.

Reflections On An NGSS Field Test

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 14:17:00 +0000

My first field test with NGSS based curriculum has concluded. By the numbers, I had fifty-six classroom teachers and around 1100 students participate (demographic breakdown below). This represents five percent of the total K-2 population. It included students in behavioral programs, severely disabled students, and approximately 40% FaRMS.

So, what do I know now:

Teachers need to understand the performance expectations. Without the "why" they focused on the "what". See my previous post on unpacking the standards down to learning goals and success criteria.
Creating videos of teachers implementing the curriculum is time consuming, but highly valued. Being able to watch another teacher do what you are about to do builds confidence. I need to work on quality control, but it is a start.
Online assessments don't work very well when students are just learning to use computers. While every student in the field test had a computer, it took them three months to get agile with it. There are also significant technical challenges that need to be overcome before these assessments are truly viable.
Performance assessments get the most "bang for the buck". They are also a great way to keep students engaged in learning when they know they get to apply what they have learned to solving a real-world, local problem.
Don't expect teachers to be comfortable with NGSS based curriculum the first time they teach it. It will have to grow on you.

What do the kids think? I took a risk this year and created a survey to allow students to comment back about their experiences in the curriculum. Keep in mind that these were K-2 students. The majority of responses came from grade 2. I copied the text based responses into Wordcloud .

What do you want to change?

Note: The word "nothing" was removed as it overshadowed the other words

What did you like?

The words beach, wall, and flower are referencing the three units for grade 2. You can get a full overview of all the K-2 units in my previous post.

What's next?

The field test for grades 3-5 is next. I just wrapped up the professional development for that on Thursday. Great group of teachers hung out with me in a rather sultry and odoriferous elementary school. We covered the big parts to the first two units. This included a large amount of time discussing scientific argument using the CER model and the KLEWS strategy. We used the spandex model of the universe as our scientific phenomena. That's right I introduced General Relativity to elementary teachers and it is part of our grade 5 unit on space. I blame the folks who developed the NGSS. They are the ones who put gravity in with the motion of objects in the universe. I had to find a way to connect the two to maintain a good storyline. I encourage you to build this model for yourself. It is awesome!

A subsequent professional development will occur in December for the last two. I will have roughly equivalent numbers of teachers participating this year but with a lot more students. In grades 3-5, almost all the teachers departmentalize.

Next, I move forward with K-2 for the entire system. Our board of education saw fit to approve the purchase of materials for all K-2 teachers. That will be the largest purchase order I have ever signed. My thanks to them for their support.

In July, a small group of K-2 field test teachers will update the curriculum based on feedback from this year. That will be a very interesting two-week process.

Lastly, I will also be conducting professional development en masse in August. 1200 teachers in one day. I provided an outline of the plan in a previous post. The reality of PD at this scale is just now setting in.

Keeping My Girls in the STEM Pipeline and Coping with the Guilt

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sun, 05 Jun 2016 18:36:00 +0000

Apologies for the delay between posts. I have not forgotten about my promise to expand more on small group instruction in the elementary science classroom. The responses to the webinar really moved me down the path and there have been some technical solutions that I believe, under the right circumstances, can lead to needs-based, small group instruction in the elementary classroom. I promise a post is forthcoming.

The focus of this month's blog is really about what happened last month. My May was bookended by two graduations. My oldest daughter graduated from Shippensburg University, my Alma Mater, with a degree in Geoenvironmental Studies. Her senior project (click on the image to see the full poster) is based on a love of geology that started as a little girl with piles of rocks accumulated in her room. She is looking for job if anyone is hiring.

My youngest daughter graduated from high school with a 4.02 GPA, and a balance between the arts and sciences that is rare- a real STEAM prodigy! She will be attending the University of Maryland-College Park this fall where she was accepted into their architecture program (a picture she was thoroughly embarrassed by, which is why I posted it).

While I am doubtlessly proud of both girls, I have been asked on countless occasions how I got two girls into STEM related careers. I will be the first to say that it had as much to do with my wife as myself. The sad thing is that a two parent household is increasingly a rare occurrence. This is not to diminish the work single parents do everyday raising their kids, but I recognize the advantage it brought to my girls.

Second, my children were marinated in science from an early age. I am reminded of the last year's Verizon commercial (shown below). My wife and I did not deter our daughters from engaging in science, getting outside, or getting dirty. My wife and I have the means to provide experiences. Another advantage my children had.

That also meant not allowing either to back down when things got tough. Whether that was AP Calculus or hydrology, perseverance is alive and well in both girls. Notice I did not say grit. Recent research points to luck or cultural advantages as the likely the roots of success.

Lastly, my wife and I model the value of lifelong learning. For as long as my children can remember, either my wife or I have been taking classes, teaching, or graduating from college with our own degrees. This value of learning is not shared by all families. Not because they don't want to, but because they need to provide food on the table, pay bills, and hope the funds make it through the month or week. In this case, it is the advantage of having time to consider additional schooling instead of finding basic needs on a daily basis (that is until the college loan bills start pouring in).

So where am I going with this post? Part of it is to brag on my daughters. How often does a father get two graduations at a time! The other part is focused on the advantages my children have because of the privileges my culture and country provide.

Over the last several years, my system has been grappling with the achievement gaps that continue to grow. These gaps are present within races and low soci-economic classes. I participate in monthly sessions were we've been breaking down the causes and solutions to these issues. The last session was personally difficult for me as it made me painfully aware of the advantages I have. While I could dwell in my "white guilt", I've realized the work I've done with the NGSS curriculum will at least help marinate more students in science and engineering at an early age. It is a start, but the work must continue until we can achieve "all standards for all students". It is hard for me now not to focus on the inequities that exist. As one of my trainers put it "You can't un-see once you have seen",

Going Big: Getting 1200 Teachers to Implement the Next Generation Science Standards

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 01:05:00 +0000

As I discussed earlier, my school system has 114 elementary schools. That equates to roughly 400 teachers per grade level. That means in August, I have 1200 teachers who will begin teaching the NGSS for the first time. How will I meet the professional development needs of the equivalent of an army regiment?

Let's start with the traditional face to face option. On August 17th, I will hold a half day professional learning experience for all 1200. There will be five centers, one in each geographic area. At each center, a classroom teacher who piloted the curriculum this year will lead a professional development focused on practical implementation strategies they used during the year. A session which will give them an opportunity to gain some hands-on experience from the perspective of a student. This session will be preceded by a video based professional development which digs into the inner workings of the curriculum guides.

On top of that, my staff and I have been going into classrooms all year video recording the aforementioned pilot teachers implementing the lessons. These videos are embedded in the associated lessons as "need it right now" professional development. We don't have them all, but many of them.

Lastly, is the curriculum itself. Each guide and lesson is an opportunity to improve the pedagogical and content knowledge of teachers. One thing I've learned this year as a result of writing curriculum and watching it being taught, is that the NGSS are confusing for the uninitiated. Teachers need to understand the performance expectations in order to understand why they are teaching the curriculum we wrote. As Steven Pruitt said in his top ten list , simply reading the NGSS does not mean you understand them.

To overcome this, my district has invested time in helping us understand the concepts of Learning Goals and Success Criteria. I discussed Success Criteria in an earlier post. Those are the much lauded "I can" statements. As I've worked on understanding these in the context of the NGSS, I made a pretty significant upgrade to my lesson plan structure.

The table below is the outcome of several design iterations. It starts with an engaging essential question followed by the PE. The color coded section is an hommage to the NGSS. On the left, are the learning goals. This section comes directly from the three components of the PE. These are what students are expected to understand.

This word "understand" is a difficult one. How do we know students understand something? This is where the Success Criteria come in. These are directly from the evidence statements. While these are three dimensional, they tend to learn toward one of the PE components more than another.

Below the colored section is the student friendly version. The Success Criteria are the non-negotiables. The Success Criteria (aka "I can" statements) are a starting place. They are specifically what students will do to demonstrate they understand the Success Criteria. These are negotiable. A teacher may decide that the lesson we wrote will not meet the needs of their student. They can develop their own "I can" statements based on the needs of their students.

The example below comes from the grade 5 Earth Systems topic page. As always, I look forward to your comments and questions.

Essential Question: How is water distributed around the world?
Standard: 5-ESS2-2. Describe and graph the amounts and percentages of water and fresh water in various reservoirs to provide evidence about the distribution of water on Earth.
Learning Goals(s): (based on the components of the performance expectation) Students will know and be able to:	Success Criteria: (based on the evidence statements) Students can:
Describe and graph quantities such as area and volume to address scientific questions.	Students graph the given data (using standard units) about the amount of salt water and the amount of fresh water in each of the following reservoirs, as well as in all the reservoirs combined, to address a scientific question
Nearly all of Earth’s available water is in the ocean. Most fresh water is in glaciers or underground; only a tiny fraction is in streams, lakes, wetlands, and the atmosphere.	Students use the graphs of the relative amounts of total salt water and total fresh water in each of the reservoirs to describe that: The majority of water on Earth is found in the oceans. Most of the Earth’s fresh water is stored in glaciers or underground. A small fraction of fresh water is found in lakes, rivers, wetlands, and the atmosphere.
Standard units are used to measure and describe physical quantities such as weight and volume.	Measure quantities of water using metric units.
Student Friendly Learning Goal(s): I understand:	Student Friendly Success Criteria: I can:
the amount of water found in oceans, lakes, rivers, glaciers, groundwater and ice caps can be represented.	create a graph showing the relative percentages of each source of water on Earth.
most of the water on Earth is in the oceans freshwater is distributed unequally across the Earth	explain where freshwater can and cannot be found on Earth in relation to where people live.
liquids are measured in volume using liters as its unit.	measure quantities of water to represent each source of water on Earth if all water equaled 1000 ml.

Becoming Banneker: Making Movements in Space Meaningful on Earth

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sat, 23 Jan 2016 21:07:00 +0000

As I wait for the blizzard to end here in Stewartstown, I thought I would do another blog post about the latest unit I just completed. So let's start with the performance expectations for this unit. Using the topic based arrangement- "Space Systems: Stars and the Solar System".

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

5-PS2-1. Support an argument that the gravitational force exerted by Earth on objects is directed down. [Clarification Statement: “Down” is a local description of the direction that points toward the center of the spherical Earth.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include mathematical representation of gravitational force.]

5-ESS1-1. Support an argument that differences in the apparent brightness of the sun compared to other stars is due to their relative distances from the Earth. [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to relative distances, not sizes, of stars. Assessment does not include other factors that affect apparent brightness (such as stellar masses, age, stage).]

5-ESS1-2. Represent data in graphical displays to reveal patterns of daily changes in length and direction of shadows, day and night, and the seasonal appearance of some stars in the night sky. [Clarification Statement: Examples of patterns could include the position and motion of Earth with respect to the sun and selected stars that are visible only in particular months.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include causes of seasons.]

As you may recall, the two questions I filter all curriculum through are:

Why am I doing this?
What will it help me to do?

If this is the starting point, what are the practical application for students in Baltimore County? As it turns out, there has been (and still is) a very practical application- calculating location. For hundreds of years, people have used the stars and Sun as a guide. It also turns out that Baltimore County had a local expert on the subject.

In 1731, Benjamin Banneker was born and through his own study became an expert surveyor. Eventually, his skills were recognized by Andrew Ellicot and Mr. Banneker became part of the an important survey team. The team that would eventually layout Washington, D.C.

Mr. Banneker was able to use Polaris to measure latitude and the movements of Jupiter's moons to measure longitude. The precision he was able to achieve with his tools and techniques could be measured to within a meter. For comparison, the first GPS I used for recreational purposes was +/- 3-5 meters.

So, here is how it works. Latitude is easy. Measure the angle of Polaris off the horizon using a sextant or clinometer and you have the latitude. Finding Polaris gets me into comparing star magnitudes and which stars are visible at certain times of the year. Two great resources to help show students the stars during the day. Stellarium and Celestia offer the opportunity for student to control time (#DoctorWho).

Longitude is and has historically been the chief problem. With latitude, you have a starting point called the equator. Longitude has no natural starting point. The prime meridian is an artificial starting place. However, if you know when something happens in Greenwich and can see it happen where you are, then you can find longitude by finding the difference in time.

Mr. Banneker would use an ephemeris of Jupiters' moons. The ephemeris allows the user to know when one of Jupiter's moons is coming out of eclipse. Observing Jupiter requires at least a six inch telescope. It also requires a night sky. These are problems given the confines of school hours and budgets.

For my students, we will use Solar Noon. Solar noon occurs at 12:00 only twice during the year. Beyond that, it ranges widely 16 minutes +/ - from 12:00 depending on the time of the year. This relates to the "Equation of Time". So how do you find Solar Noon? At Solar Noon, the Sun produces the shortest shadow of the day. See the complicated device (below) for measuring that shadow. This picks up the performance expectation on the length and angle of shadows.

This leaves the PE on gravity. This one took me a while to figure out. I shows up in two ways in the unit. First, I did go a little beyond the standards by asking the question "Why is everything spinning in space?" I could not resist a model which demonstrates this phenomena so elegantly.

The second way is through measuring time. Benjamin Banneker reverse engineered a clock from a pocket watch he borrowed. His hand-carved wooden clock used a simple weight pulling down on a spool controlled by an escapement to regulate time. The development of accurate clocks is what finally made it possible to measure longitude.

About six minutes into the video above, you will see the host build a clock out of raw wood pieces. I found a version of the same thing on Thingiverse. It was interesting to get it working.

In the performance assessment, students are responsible for calculating their location to the nearest full degree or about 111 km of their actual location. More importantly they have to explain how they calculated the location.

Is Curriculum a Guide or a Script?

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sun, 17 Jan 2016 17:35:00 +0000

It has been a while since my last post. Actually, it seems like a lifetime ago. I will diverge from my normal discussion of science curriculum for a moment, but will bring it back around. Just stay with me.

Last July, my father was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of cancer undoubtedly from exposure to Agent Orange during his year of service in Vietnam. He was a helicopter pilot and was tasked with spraying the herbicide. He told me that due to the prop wash, he would come back soaked in it.

My father just prior to deployment in 1968.

I was out of the office almost all of November due to the complications he has endured through this process. I've learned more about the science and art of medicine in these last few months than I ever wanted to know. At one point, I found myself sitting at my father's bedside with my mother and the oncologist as we discussed treatment options. The Mayo Clinic was consulted and a treatment regime was prescribed which had been deemed effective for most patients. I say "most" because my father has a rather complex medical history. Complex enough that it should qualify him for a season of "House".

The oncologist read through the recommendations with us and reviewed my father's most recent test results. Based on these results, he decided to follow a slightly different regime. As of this posting, my father has seen a 70% reduction in the "bad cells" and we are hopeful that by the end of January to be in remission.

What are the lessons to be learned here?

A set of treatments was prescribed.
Test results prior to treatment indicated a modified, more individual course of action.
The treatment is proving to be successful.
There is an art and science to treatment.

Let's get back on the topic of this blog. My primary job, at the moment, is developing curriculum based on the Next Generation Science Standards for the throngs of teachers in my system. This curriculum is a suggested course of action. It provides many of the components needed to assist teachers in developing mastery of the standards in students. Now, I'm not comparing myself to the Mayo Clinic, but the expectation is that I am the local expert on the NGSS. Now I could complete this analogy but I think you know where I am going. Teachers are the doctors and students are the patients.

What is the purpose of curriculum? As a teacher, I lived two very different realities when it came to curriculum. As a kindergarten teacher, I had no curriculum. I based my instruction on the end of grade level expectations. I had to make up curriculum on my own. As a high school science teacher, I received curriculum from my supervisor. A three inch thick binder. Blue with a green cover as I recall. I remember looking through it and realizing that, while it had good lessons it did not meet the needs of my students. Once again, I had to make up my own curriculum, but at least I had a starting point.

The idea of following a curriculum, chapter and verse, never occurred to me. I always viewed curriculum as a guide developed by people who have a pretty good idea about what most kids need. We'll call this a science. It was then my job as a teacher to find the best fit for my students. That takes a little science and a lot of art to make that happen. Great teachers are almost poetic.

As I discussed back in October (Articulating Expectations into a Personalized Learning Environment), I outlined a new set of curriculum expectations developed by my school system. In summary, through pre-assessment, we formatively use data to diagnose where students are before instruction starts. The result is multiple groups of students consuming instruction based on their instructional need in the same room.

I would hope that the merits of small group instruction are self-evident, but consider this. In one of my prior jobs, I worked with "gifted" students. How many of these students coast through instruction they have already mastered? Conversely, how many students endure instruction for which they are not ready?

The question is, then what. How do you logistically manage a class like this. At the secondary level, there are more options. Students can take different classes. At the elementary level, it is more self-contained. A reality lost on many people outside (and some inside) education.

So, I am opening a dialogue to discuss these ideas. I am going to host a webinar on February 2 (Ground Hog Day) to develop some concrete strategies for all of us. Click on this hyperlink at 7:00 PM (EST). The rough agenda will be as follows.

I will discuss the specifics of the curriculum framework I developed (I am open to other ideas.)
Start building a set of management strategies for teachers
Think beyond the current realities of classroom instruction. Do we need a different concept of what a classroom is? What does the field of educational technology need to offer us? Do we need to "Amazonify" how students access content?

I look forward to talking with you at the webinar!

Articulating Expectations into a Personalized Learning Environment

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sun, 04 Oct 2015 22:18:00 +0000

I missed my monthly update so I guess I will have to do two in October. I wanted to talk about some new attributes to my curriculum that have really altered how teachers and students engage in answering the age old question “Where am I?”. I touched on this idea in July when I discussed "I can" statements.

Once we have the “I can” statements established, they are then used to form a proficiency table. These table have filled an important void that existed in my previous curriculum. We have always offered pre and post assessments to teachers. Ostensibly, the resulting data was to assist teachers in differentiating the curriculum. However, it quickly became apparent that most teachers did not have a clear view of how to make that happen. The proficiency tables are a way to fill in that blank.
Shown below is an example for grade 3 :

LEVEL	DESCRIPTION BASED ON PRE-ASSESSMENT RESULTS	UNIT SPECIFIC STUDENT EXPECTATIONS	SUGGESTED CURRICULAR PATH
4	Pre-assessment data which indicates students master prior knowledge/processes and current content/process (via performance) are level 4.	I can: Use scientific evidence to explain how a design solution reduces the impact of weight from a weather-related hazard such as a blizzard Design and build a structure to withstand the impacts (weight and wind of a hurricane and/or a blizzard.	Students at this level build their own structure from scratch to withstand an additional weather-related hazard such as wind from a hurricane and/or blizzard. They are given the parts to build the structure and may also bring parts from home to build the structure within the construction parameters.
3	Pre-assessment data which indicates students master prior knowledge/processes and on grade level content are level 3.	I can: Explain and interpret data presented in a table, graph, or chart Compare weather v. climate Predict weather based on information presented in a graph, table, or chart Evaluate information from print and nonprint resources Describe and explain how climates vary in different regions of the world Use patterns of change in climate to predict typical weather conditions in different regions	Students at this level should be given more time to conduct the investigations. The teacher should spend less time modeling the investigation. Students can also be given more time to design, build, and refine their structural designs.
2	Pre-assessment data which indicates students have mastered the prior content but does not demonstrate understanding of on grade level content and processes are a level 2	I can: Use print and nonprint resources Use data presented in a graph, table, or chart Identify and describe types of weather Identify and describe impacts from weather-related hazards Describe ways weather affects our everyday lives Work with other students to conduct an investigation	Students are ready for grade level appropriate content and processes with modifications as needed.
1	Pre-assessment data which indicates students who do not understand the prior content are a level 1.	I can: Not identify types of weather Not understand how weather changes from season to season Not identify weather-related hazards Not identify impacts from weather-related hazards Not understand data presented in graphs, tables, or charts	Students at this level should be given the opportunity to access digital data from the weather unit from kindergarten to build background knowledge about weather, climate, and visual data representations.

As you move from bottom to top, students expertise increases. Ultimately, students should be ready for level 4 by the end of the unit (transferring learning to a new solving a new problem). This idea is very new to me and to my teachers. It will take a lot of refinement over the next several years to get this process "perfected".

Here is the new problem that has developed. While we are finally able to determine student levels of mastery after pre-assessment, the problem is "then what".

To be specific, imagine a classroom where you have students spread across all four proficiency levels. Three students do not have the prior knowledge necessary to engage with the grade level content (Level 1). There is one student who spent a summer at meteorology camp and is past level four. Fifteen students are ready for the curriculum as is (level 2) and the remaining nine pretty much know the content (level 3) and just need time to work on their prediction skills. That's a class of 29 if you are keeping count. What do multiple needs groups look like in science? It is very different than reading where we litterally have moving parts. If we are working towards a personalized learning environment for students, we need to develop strategies for teachers to manage it. Anyone have ideas or good references for what this might look like in the elementary classroom?

As always, keep the comments and questions coming. We are in this together.

Reflections on a Second Summer of NGSS Curriculum Writing

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sat, 29 Aug 2015 14:48:00 +0000

I'm happy to report that I survived the summer curriculum writing adventure. I have to honestly say that this year's work went a lot better than last year's. This is not to disparage last year's writers in any way. I simply did not have the experience with the NGSS at that time. A year of working on that curriculum coupled with a healthy infusion of evidence statements yields much better work. I can't compliment my team enough. They far exceeded my expectation. Among the tasks completed:

Unpacked standards using the evidence statements and converted them to "I can" statements.
Created performance assessments including rubrics
Created "content assessments" and loaded them to our assessment engine
Wrote every lesson for the unit using Understanding by Design and 5E (see previous post for lesson plan outline)
Edited lessons within our learning management system
Made partnerships with outside entities in order to provide students with local and realistic roles within our performances.
Tested many of the hands-on aspects to the units. ( This is why we do this job. Let's be honest.)

A few words about our assessment model. You will see that I mentioned both performance and a "content" assessment. Our units start by asking students to solve a problem using only their background knowledge. This is a pre-performance assessment. Whatever standards cannot be realistically assessed through the performance are assessed using the "content" assessment. These usually assess more than content but I could not come up with another name. "Leftover" assessment just would not work. At the end of the unit, students are given a parallel set of assessments. The performance is a chance for students to iterate their original design. In between these two assessment events, every lesson comes back to solving the problem.

#RelevanceIsEverything

Relevance, if you have not heard already, is of paramount importance to me. To that end, one last comment about the evidence statements. The team did a great job writing a curriculum that which assess the vast majority of them. However, my charge to team was that if they could not make an evidence statement fit into the curriculum, they were not to use it. Doubtless, this may come back to bite me whenever the assessments come out, but I would much rather have kids see their learning as meaningful to them.

Once more onto the breach, dear friends, once more...

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sat, 04 Jul 2015 20:02:00 +0000

I have had a couple of request for my lesson plan format, and as I am about to embark on writing grades three through five, I suspect my postings will be limited for a while. Our legacy curriculum was already based on the 5E model. Happily, this integrates with Understanding by Design (UbD) fairly easily. Keep in mind that UbD is more of a curriculum design framework rather than a just a lesson plan template.

During stage 1, we spend a lot of time unpacking the standards and making sure we understand exactly what students are asked to know and be able to do. This process was made significantly easier by the addition of the NGSS evidence statements. These really clarified what the writers had in mind and doubtless signal what and how students will be assessed.

Now, I will say the release of these statements drove me mad. They came out on the day we wrapped up grades K-2. A quick analysis of what we wrote showed that we were close, but some work will need to be done after our field test next year.

Back to stage 1. These evidence statements will be converted to "I can" statements. For my purposes, I define these as a restatement of the evidence statements in student friendly language. A task I am dreading when it comes to my rewrite of Kindergarten.

I can push
I can pull

These might be the limits given the reading ability of most Kindergarten students. I have seen some "I can" statements based on the NGSS. These, however, are a restatement of the performance expectations. These are far too coarse for my purposes.

Once we understand the standards, it is time to move on to stage 2. This is the assessment development portion. Here is where we dip into problem based learning and develop a performance based assessment. For our units, these problems are locally relevant and attempt to tie as many of the "I can" statements together as possible. These are also the basis for our storylines.

I am of a firm believe that a good curriculum should tell a story across each lesson. It is our goal that at some point during the lesson, students are asked to apply what they have learned to the problem in the unit. By the end, these individual applications become the basis for a final iteration of their original solution. Whatever does not fit into this performance assessment is assessed through more traditional means using our learning management system's assessment engine.

The assessments form the bookends of the curriculum. For each unit there is a pre-performance assessment. Here students are given the opportunity to solve the problem with whatever background knowledge they bring to the unit. By the end, their new iteration is a measure of how much they have grown across one unit of study. An important feature in our new era of teacher accountability.

At stage 3, we carve individual lessons plans. Just so we are on the same page, a lesson is not necessarily built on a specific amount of time. It is built on whatever it takes for students to accomplish the "I can" statement (formerly known as an objective).

The next page shows the lesson plan format we are using and was discussed above. I look forward to your questions and suggestions.

Standards-

For NGSS use the specific coding you were given. Copy and paste. USE HYPHENS IN PLACE OF BULLETS

Look for opportunities to integrate CCR and P21 as well.

Description: Gives the teacher a brief summary of what the lesson is about and what students will be doing. Finishes with estimated time to implement the lesson expressed in number of 60 minute classes.(Two-60 minute classes)

Stage 1- Desired Results

Essential Question: Avoid yes or no questions or those with a “Google-able” Answer. Should drive instruction during the lesson. Conveys the big idea to the teacher.

Enduring Understandings:

Students will understand that:

-What specific understandings should students have after the lesson? There can be multiple items. USE HYPHENS IN PLACE OF BULLETS

Objective: STUDENT FRIENDLY LANGUAGE which starts with “I can”

Stage 2- Assessment Evidence

Assessment Type	Description	Criteria
Summative:	What tool will teachers use to collect the evidence that students have mastered the “I can…”?	What is the evidence of mastery?
Formative:	What should a teacher observe during the lesson in order to make modifications along the way?	What specific evidence should guide teachers to making modifications?

Stage 3- Plan

Lesson Background:

What would be helpful for the teacher to understand about the content of this lesson? Include link

Lesson Prep:

What will a teacher need to prepare before the lesson? This is copied to the Advanced Preparation section of the previous lesson. USE HYPHENS IN PLACE OF BULLETS

Materials:

For the teacher:

What materials will the teacher need? Include the physical and digital assets.

For each group of students

Group work is essential to 21^st century skills. Groups should be no larger than 3-4 students.

Materials kits will be built for a max class size of 32 (8 groups of 4).

For each individual student:

What materials will students need?

Lesson Planner with Differentiation:

Components	Brief Description
Engagement	How will you capture students attention and focus them on the “I can..”? What do students already know (or think they know) about the phenomena? Have students make a claim when appropriate. USE HYPHENS IN PLACE OF BULLETS Each stage should be written with enough detail to guide instruction, but IT IS NOT A SCRIPT. Be sure to include suggested questions to assist teachers in guiding discussions. Highlight critical points in the lesson if a teacher must absolutely follow the lesson or else a teachable moment may be lost.
Exploration	How will students interact with the phenomena? What evidence will they collect to support their claim? USE HYPHENS IN PLACE OF BULLETS
Explanation	How will students explain the evidence? How will they express their understanding? In science, students should not be limited to only written explanations. USE HYPHENS IN PLACE OF BULLETS
Elaboration	How does understanding the phenomena help students solve the problem? USE HYPHENS IN PLACE OF BULLETS
Evaluation	What tool will teachers use to collect the evidence that students have mastered the “I can…”? (Summative Assessment) USE HYPHENS IN PLACE OF BULLETS

Advanced Preparation for Next Lesson:

Will be pasted in from the Lesson Prep section of the next lesson. Complete after finalizing next lesson.

Grade		Unit		Lesson
Developers

Interactive Notebooks with Training Wheels

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Mon, 18 May 2015 00:48:00 +0000

An essential component to our new curriculum will be the use of Interactive Science Notebooks (ISN). If you are among the uninitiated, check out the works of Kelly Marcarelli, Lori Fulton, and Brian Campbell. . I have also created a Pinterest board full of ideas to get you started.

After conducting professional development for about 2000 teachers, I realized I needed to adopt a hybrid model to bring the other 5000 over to "light side". There will always be a place for authentic ISNs in classroom, but I have to wean everyone off of worksheets first (#Death2Worksheets). Thus the model I have adopted brings in the best of both worlds.

It has the structure of traditional ISNs but built with efficiency in mind. Traditional ISNs utilize some classroom time to building the ISN including paste-ins, foldables, and data tables. These are all valuable tasks, but when there is only 30 minutes of instructional time (K-2 in my world), I want to make every minute focused on collecting and anything the data rather than making the data chart.

To the purest out there that are now scowling, I know what you're saying. Learning how to build a data table is an instructional tasks. Yes it is, but in NGSS the words "with guidance" appear quite a bit it the K-2 practices. As we move to grades 3-5, the pages will get more open-ended. Now, back to the show.

There a couple of ways to sum up our model. It still uses the left-right format, but when I first tried telling teachers that the output was on the left more than a few screams were heard. So after some consultation with my friends in the 6-12 world (middle and high schools have used ISNs for many moons in my district), a rephrasing of the model was developed.

On the left side, the student is talking to the teacher. On the right side the teacher is talking to the student. Another way to look at this is through the lens of the 5E model.

At the start of the lesson, students are asked to demonstrate what they know (or think they know).

During the lesson, students engage in understanding some phenomena. This encompasses Exploration and Explanation. Towards the end, students demonstrate their new understanding through a summative evaluation. I sometimes have a hard time separating the elaboration from the evaluation because in many cases, they both require students to apply what they know. For those of you writing SLOs, the left page captures where a student started and how far they have grown by the end.

This is not THE way. Everyday, this model evolves a little as we build the ISNs to compliment the curriculum. Below, are a couple of the pages currently in production for the field test next year. I produce these using Publisher. Our printshop copies and distributes to the schools.

K:Weather and Climate

K: Pushes and Pulls

Lastly, as we move into grades 3-5, I am looking for a digital version to replace the paper based model for K-2. I am having a hard time finding an efficient way for students to put down their ideas. As always, please comment. Don't take my word for it. Question everything.

3..2..1...Launch!!!

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Mon, 30 Mar 2015 01:43:00 +0000

So, I am working on the Structures and Properties of Matter storyline. Lots of possibilities here but I think I will settle on the classics. Nothing engages kids more than the old baking soda and vinegar rocket. It really captures all of the performance expectations nicely. However, the problem I have with them is the whole "turn over the rocket and run" solution to safety.

So how do we make the launch more predictable and safe for everyone? That became my obsession this weekend. After many iterations, I have a usable solution. It requires some refinement but the core idea is pretty solid. To finish it off, I want to add a pressure gauge and a catch to hold the rocket on until mission command is ready to launch. It took six modifications and a 3D printer, but I think that will work as well. Here is the "Mk 1" launcher.

Baking Soda and Vinegar Rocket Laucher from Eric Cromwell on Vimeo.

How did we choose what to teach in the NGSS?

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sun, 15 Mar 2015 15:14:00 +0000

Greetings everyone! Just getting back from NSTA and am really charged up (as is the intention of good conferences). It is really gratifying to talk with so many enthusiastic teachers and administrators with a passion for teaching elementary students about the wonders of the universe. I still find it a hoot when I get approached by people excited about reading my blog. It tells me there is a real need to talk about this time of change we are going through, but please don't take my word for it...

Honestly, the intent of this blog from the beginning has been to put out the path that I am taking not as thee path, but as a set of ideas to get this process moving. I want to be questioned and challenged about my ideas. Indeed, challenge is the path to improvement. In the spirit of that idea, I have been asked the question in my title several times. So here is my response.

I use the topic based arrangement of the NGSS as is. Each page of performance expectations is the basis for a unit. My assumption has been that there was some reason the PE's to be bundled this way; although after questioning the writers for confirmation of this the best I got was "these are the ones that seemed to fit together coherently." In a couple of units, we have to get very creative.

The grade 3 page on Forces and Motion for example. It combines classic Newtonian concepts with electromagnetic forces. We can make it work, but it feels very odd. The Safe Racer program is being upgraded. It will not only challenge students to keep an egg safe in their cars, but also require them to explain how the magnetic release system we will be adding works. Along with measuring how far the car goes, we can measure how fast the cars are going by accurately measuring the time it takes the car to reach the end of the ramp.

In another example, the unit is split into two parts under a coherent storyline. The Kindergarten Weather & Climate performance expectations have two distinct themes; protecting yourself from the sun and predicting the weather. Our storyline for this unit asks students to build a structure to protect everyone from the sun while on the playground. Part 2 asks the students to evaluate weather data in order to determine if they should tell the principal to take down the structure so it is not damaged by severe weather. We actually have students evaluate the radar image. It is easier than you think. Break it down into two parts. What colors symbolize severe weather and what direction is it moving?

So why not cherry pick the NGSS like so many publishers are doing. For one, the NGSS is built on learning progressions. This focus on progressions makes science cumulative. When I talk to principals and other officials, I tell them to think about science like math now. Imagine what would happen if schools stopped teaching math from K-5. There is no way middle schools would ever compensate for that lost foundational knowledge. That is science in an NGSS world.

My second concern in a buffet approach to the NGSS is orphaning a performance expectation. I did not want to get to the end of curriculum writing and realize we missed one. The one exception to this was in grade 5. I shifted the PE on people improving the environment (5-ESS3-1) from the Earth Systems page to the Movement of Energy and Matter page. That was the topic of my last blog entry.

Lastly, I have ignored the engineering PE's as a separate entity. It felt too much like the days when we "wove in" the old skills and processes.   Each unit, so far, has students working collaboratively to build a physical object. That may be a model (beach erosion prevention), prototype (biomimicry solution), or fully functioning object (hand pollinator for example). In this way, students are learning to act as engineers within context.

As always, context and relevance are of extreme importance to me. We are a practical species. We tend to care about things when they are important to us. I attended a pre-conference session by Megan Bang. One of the great points she brought up is that we have to stop expecting our students to ask questions and respond based on our cultural norms. What does that mean in this context? Curriculum developers may find the phenomena of science exciting but until students see themselves connected to it, they will continue to ignore it. As you read through your curriculum ask yourself these two questions from the perspective of your students.

Why am I learning this?

What will it help me to do?

Two Birds with One Curriculum

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 03:28:00 +0000

One of the myriad of challenges faced by curriculum developers today is finding out how many initiatives can be jammed into one curriculum guide. Just in terms of standards, there are six sets which must be addressed to some extent in my curriculum.

What I will attempt to do is illustrate on possible model to satisfy many of these standards in one unit.

For many years, students across the district have enjoyed a one day outdoor education experience as part of their grade five curriculum. The focus is on energy transfer within different habitats.

Fortunately, the NGSS did not shift this content from grade five. The Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems topic page still requires students to develop the quintessential food web model. At the same time, elementary students across the state must have a "Meaningful Watershed Experience" (MWEE).

A MWEE is most readily defined by a primary research process (I smell a Common Core connection!) developed in the early 1980's by Harold Hungerford and Trudi Volk at the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale. The name of the process is Investigating and Evaluating Environmental Issues and Actions (IEEIA). Not to be confused with E-I-E-I-O. The research process was co-opted by Maryland and is now standard 1 of the Environmental Literacy Standards. The process looks like this:

Identify an environmental issue.
Develop and write research questions related to an environmental issue.
Given a specific issue, communicate the issue, the stakeholders involved and the stakeholders’ beliefs and values.
Design and conduct the research.
Use data and references to interpret findings to form conclusions.
Use recommendation(s) to develop and implement an environmental action plan.
Communicate, evaluate and justify personal views on environmental issue and alternate ways to address them.
Analyze the effectiveness of the action plan in terms of achieving the desired outcomes.

With this process in mind, how do we have students focus on matter and energy in ecosystems? To answer that, let's start with the issue. Issues are usually stated in a simple question. For this unit, we are looking at the following:

Can people manage the ecosystem within Baltimore County?

From here students go into the field and conduct a modified "BioBlitz". They leave the field study with a large list of living things that undoubtedly interact. The students must develop a food web of these organisms. Now, here is the secret. The areas students survey are overpopulated with deer. This is no surprise as most of the metropolitan area is overrun. The impact these large herbivores have on the environment cannot be overstated. The question is what to do about it. This is one of those situations which has no one right answer and one that will not make everyone happy. (Ambiguity is part of the P21 Standards). Here is a great video to introduce the complexity of the issue.

There was a physicists several years ago that stated something to the extent that we have to stop asking students questions that had answers. I think this might have been in reference to theoretical physics but the idea stuck with me. We have a lot of big problems in the world that cannot be simply bubbled in on the test. Giving students the opportunity to grapple with complex issues in a safe environment is something we should do in schools.

If you are interested in seeing what students can generate when given a complex topic, take a look at my repository of student generated projects.

Issues Investigation Repository

2/3 Down and Looking Ahead

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sun, 15 Feb 2015 00:37:00 +0000

Greetings Science Curriculum Fans! Well, we are two thirds done with curriculum writing this year. I think we are getting a little better each time. How do I know? During the reviews, we give each table a composition book to record suggested changes or concerns they have. The number of comments drastically dropped between the first review and second. Not a scientific study but a point of data nonetheless.

As often happens, a discussion with the field test teachers led to an inspired project for me. Each of the major curriculum offices create their own implementation calendars. Mine is a suggested sequence by unit. The reading office has their calendar by week. The idea that came about was a combined calendar showing all the curriculum at once.

I am still gathering input on the layout, but it has been met with a lot of interest from the few teachers who have seen the draft.

Moving ahead, I prepare for curriculum writing this summer. As stated earlier (A Five Year Mission), this summer we start work on grades three through five. This summer will be a little different. I started with teams of five teachers working on one unit. That was a little ungainly and presented a curriculum draft with lots of voices to sort out and homogenize. This summer the teams will be smaller with only three writers per unit. Also, I solicited middle school science teachers and Gateway to Technology teachers. As I look at the performance expectations, much of the content at grades four and five is currently taught in middle school. Whats more, I really want the insights that the Gateway to Technology teachers bring. They manage engineering projects with students everyday. That kind of pedagogical knowledge will be worth its weight in gold.

Stay tuned. Over the next few weeks. I will give you some ideas about the storylines we are planning for this summer. Here are a few hints:

Learning the Engineering Design Process in Kindergarten: Just Add Mud and Sticks

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 03:03:00 +0000

My apologies for not posting lately. Curriculum writing takes a lot of time. As described earlier, the first kindergarten unit focuses on "Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems: Animals, Plants, and Their Environment". The storyline that evolved centered on our native insect, the Baltimore Checkerspot, and its relationship to the White Turtlehead. Using these two species as the backdrop, the needs of plants and animals are experienced.

Toward the end of the unit, we delve into how plants and animals change the environment to meet their needs. As the Turtlehead lives in wetlands that are sometimes created by the actions of beavers, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to tie some of the dimensions together. Reaching back to my previous life as an outdoor educator, I resurrected a lesson I used to do with fifth grade students. Construct a beaver dam to hold back as much water as you can. When I first wrote this lesson, I figured on a squeamish response to the traditional materials of mud and sticks. To this end, I wrote it so students would use clay and wooden coffee stirrers. You will imagine my surprise when all of the field test teachers insisted on using mud and sticks.

Earlier today, one of the schools in the system decided to give this lesson a try. I forgot how much fun this lesson was and had fun watching many of these students experience the wonder of mud for the first time. Beyond the absolute engagement mud and sticks present, it was very clear from the first part of the lesson, that the students understood the connection of beavers to the Checkerspot. What's more, they applied the engineering design process.

Refinements centered on adding sticks vertically. Some of the dams looked like porcupines

Note the tarps on the floor. Have to keep the custodian sane.

Many hands make mud work.

Students had to imagine what their dam would look like in order to develop a plan prior to building. Shortly after this, the interactive notebooks had to be put away to avoid being encrusted by mud.

NGSS Assessments and the Sword of Damocles

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sat, 11 Oct 2014 15:40:00 +0000

Inevitably the question of assessments come up when I talk to teachers, parents, and administrators about the NGSS. We have lived with the education world's variation of the "Sword of Damocles" hanging over our heads for the last 12 years so it only natural to be concerned about the next iteration. However, my response to this may seem flip but it is none the less accurate.

For elementary science, the ultimate assessment is called middle school.

Far more than ever, the standards are developmental. The physics instruction which starts at Kindergarten, builds through third, middle, high school, and then life. Without the base knowledge at Kindergarten, it becomes more difficult to catch up with each iteration. I then step off my soap box and start talking about what I know and what I suspect.

The National Academies Press released a report earlier this year entitled "Developing Assessments for the Next Generation Science Standards." Before this was released, I participated in a webinar where details regarding this report were the focus. Perhaps the most salient detail was that our "current assessment model was a non-example." So, what is our current model? Like everyone else, the ubiquitous #2 pencil plays an essential role.

This type of assessment was what it was- a means to an end. Does it really measure what students "knew and were able to do" or just what they could memorize?

Now, I told you that story to tell you this one. Once upon a time in Maryland, we had the Maryland State Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP). According to the state website, the assessment measured three things:

How well students solved problems cooperatively and individually.
How well students applied what they learned to real world problems.
How well students could relate and use knowledge from different subject areas.

At the time, most teachers did not like them because they required a lot of set up and management. However, with a few exceptions, they would also say that it really did measure what students knew and were able to do. The downside was individual accountability was difficult.

Reading between the lines of the NAP report, it feels like an assessment focused on performance will be the focus, but will be done in the digital world.

Earlier this week, I stumbled across the Technology & Engineering Literacy Assessment (TEL). Given the proliferation of computers in schools and the gauntlet that PARCC and Smarter Balance have dropped to be fully digital, I would start looking at the TEL as an example of what an NGSS based assessment system will look like.

Finally, the future of science education comes down to one brutal question. Will any science assessment count? No mater how well the assessment is developed, if schools do not see it on an equal level with Common Core assessments, then will it really mater? Unfortunately, we have moved from an intrinsically motivate institution to one extrinsically motivated. In the end, do we want the Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads or not.

A Very Spatial Opportunity

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sun, 07 Sep 2014 01:43:00 +0000

Well, one unit down and eight to go. The first "official" NGSS unit is loaded into our learning management system. The unit is based on the kindergarten "Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems" performance expectations. As you saw from the previous post, students learn about the Baltimore Checkerspot and its dependence on the White Turtlehead. As part of the performance assessment, students have to locate a place on their schoolyard or community where they could plant the White Turtlhead. To do this, the teacher gives students a printed copy of map generated by a simple mapping application I created using ArcGIS Online.

Shown below, the teacher can choose to use the aerial view or an abstracted view depending on the level of detail available. All they need do is slide the bar in the middle back and forth to see what they want.

Link to application

Developing maps and apps like this are available to every school across the U.S. because of the ConnectED initiative launched by the Whitehouse last year. These are powerful tools. In years past, these tools were confined to complex desktop applications, but the cloud movement has pushed a lot of their capacity to the online world. Everyday, new maps and applications are created by users all over the world. These can be brought into your classroom and used by your students to explore BIG DATA in unimaginable ways. What is really amazing is that students can be the creators of these maps and applications as well.

To get started, go to the ConnectED website and sign up for an account. I would also recommend visiting the Esri EdCommunity page. You will quickly find out that you are not alone. If you need help, you should find the closest GeoMentor to you. These are GIS zealots who love working with GIS and with kids (I have a dot on the map myself).

Good mapping!

Coming to a Classroom Near You!

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 19:26:00 +0000

I dropped a surprise on the curriculum teams this summer when I asked them to present an overview of their unit for video. They turned out so well, that I thought I would share them with you.

Kindergarten Units

First Grade Units

Second Grade Units

A Look Back on Two Weeks of Curriculum Writing

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sat, 19 Jul 2014 18:43:00 +0000

The dust has settled on curriculum writing. My regiment of writers have started their vacations and I am left with a full Dropbox Don't worry. I also have everything backed up on at least two flashdrives. You only make that mistake once. The files include unit level documents such as the scenario, unit outline, and pre/post assessments. More importantly, there are a series of files for each lesson. This includes the teacher lesson plan, student storyboard, interactive notebook pages, and lesson assessment. The student storyboard is a draft document I will use to create learning objects for our learning management system.

Trying out hands on experiments is one of the perks of curriculum development

The objects will be composed in SoftChalk. This program allows me to embed a variety of media. The variety allows for a more personalized learning experience. This even extends to the text on the page. When a student clicks on a highlighted word, a definition or image will appear.

As we begin to think about a fully digitized curriculum, one of the big rules we came up with was "Device When Appropriate" or DWA. I initially found that my writers felt compelled to develop some digital asset for each lesson. After talking with them about their lesson, it quickly became apparent that it was really not needed in all lessons. In a number of lessons, it could also be a huge problem. Think about a hands-on lesson involving water, soil, or chemicals. One spill and you lose a computer. Additionally, I am loathe to replace hand-on experiences with digital ones. Experiments always work in the digital world. Kids need to grapple with the gremlins inherit to science and engineering experimentation.

Sometimes a mirror is the best device to use

Many of you are familiar with interactive notebooks and are probably confused by the inclusion of them in my list of developed materials. I've worked to convert teachers from a worksheet based format to interactive notebooks. Until I can get everyone acculturated to using notebooks, I wanted to provide some training wheels. The sample below gives you an idea of what is provided. These pages are copied and bound in small books for each unit.

Each lesson would use two pages. It starts on the upper left side with students being asked what they already know about the topic. The right side constitutes the instructional side of the lesson. At the end of the lesson, the the student is prompted to show what they now know as a result of the lesson. The beauty of this format is teachers can see where students started and where they grew by the end of the lesson.

Lastly, perhaps the most important realization I had was the tendency of teachers to write curriculum which directs students to a single answer for a problem. All the problems we wrote into our units are fairly open-ended in how they can be "solved". I have attributed this tendency to twelve years of brute-force convergent thinking where all problems were solved with A,B,C,D, or E.

How far does 2100 minutes go?

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 10:08:00 +0000

Back in April I created an estimate of how long each unit would be. The ranges on those estimates were wide ranging due to not knowing how much classroom time we would have. As of now, time for science is set at 30 minutes a day for 70 days in grades K-2. For grades 3-5, it goes to 60 minutes a day for 70 days. Science alternates its units with Social Studies. The bottom line for now is that I have 2,100 minutes of curriculum time.

With this in mind, the tables below illustrate the order of the units, a brief statement about the PBA, the current estimate of unit lengths and what I estimated back in April. Keep in mind that these are still estimates. Three weeks from now, I will have a better idea.

A Look Back After Week One of Curriculum Development

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sat, 28 Jun 2014 16:24:00 +0000

First, let me offer my appreciation to the twenty-six members of my NGSS Transition Team that labored through the week to craft storylines, rubrics, unit outlines, and unit assessments. My strong suggestion to anyone moving to the NGSS is to build a team of classroom teachers. This group has worked with me since October and twenty of them will continue during curriculum writing starting on July 7.

The NGSS Transition team starts unit planning by thinking about how to reach all students.

In my last post, I discussed the unpacking document. I can't emphasize enough how important a step this is. It makes you really consider all three dimensions (DCI, SEP, and CC). Once the team unpacked the PEs, they began drafting the performance based assessment using the GRASP.

As the teams worked, I found them going back and forth revising the unpacking document as well as the PBA. Once that process stabilized, the rubric started to evolve (insert collective groan). Rubrics are the necessary evil of PBAs. One tip on rubrics. Maryland is a PARCC state so we used the four point rubric (0-3) format used throughout those assessments.

Another tip. Take advantage of pedagogies, templates, and vocabulary already in use rather than creating unique ones. For example, the NGSS refers to argument in many of the performance expectations as early as Kindergarten. The Common Core does not use argument until late elementary. In the primary grades it is called opinion. Yes, it is a nuance, but to elementary teachers already under intense change, any use of language they are comfortable with will gain you buy in. At this point, buy in is really important. We also realized with primary grades, we needed to really develop two rubrics. One with teacher language and one with student language.

The next step was to begin work on the unit outline. This is where the poetry starts. From the unpacking document, all the enduring understandings and driving questions have to be organized to build a coherent storyline that leads to the PBA. As I illustrated in my earlier post, the unit layout starts with students getting hooked by the scenario. Right after that, they solve the problem as a form of performance pre-assessemnt. As the teams worked on this outline a major obstacle had to be addressed. After the third day of work, I reviewed the preliminary work on the unit outlines to see how they were addressing all three dimensions. They were doing a great job writing the DCIs but the SEPs were almost absent. This is the legacy of No Child. We write to the content and "weave in" the process. Alternatively, there were units that focused on the "scientific method". So here is the book I want written:

Learning to Do: A Practitioners Guide to Building and Assessing the NGSS Science and Engineering Practices within Context.

It is a working title.

It is simply not enough to have students create an investigation, they have to be conscience of the fact that they are learning how to develop an investigation. This is a real mind shift. Teachers are becoming used to the hands-on side of science, but now they have to balance that with the "minds-on".

By Friday afternoon, I had the teams evaluate their unit outlines using the EQuIP Rubric. The preliminary evaluation shows a pretty good match. The hard part will be when the lessons are written.

So, in summary, here are your tips of the day.

Get a team.

Spend time unpacking the performance expectations.

Make sure your curriculum speaks the same language teachers and students are accustomed.

Figure out how to teach the practices and not just the content. Hands-on. Minds-on.

The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with A Lot of Templates- Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sun, 15 Jun 2014 20:23:00 +0000

Schools are closing which means curriculum development work is spooling up for the summer. Next week begins the official transition of my curriculum to the NGSS. I am excited and a little nervous. I equate it to going on vacation. You are excited to go, but worry constantly about what you forgot. Fortunately, my regiment of curriculum writers has been prepped to be flexible as we go. I have a plan, but it will undoubtedly need alterations. With that said, let me reveal my current plan.

As stated in a previous post I introduced you to my cracker jack transition team. They constitute the vanguard of this development process. Their mission is to take a topic page full of performance expectations (PE) and mold them into a performance based assessment scenario. These scenarios must be locally based and culturally relevant. The odd workflow, shown below, will serve as our plan of attack.

First, my thanks to Peter A'Hearn for his post in California Science. His notion of storytellers verified the direction I wanted to go and provided the basis for my first template. The NGSS is a very different species of standard. There is a critical need to really dig deep into the NGSS documents as well as the Framework which caused them. I evolved Peter's template a little and tried my best to match the colors.

This is a very non-linear process. The storyline and driving question will actually come last, sort of. A table like the one shown above has been developed for each performance expectation on a topic page. I had initially thought we might need to split some of the topic pages into multiple assessments, but the K-2 pages hang well together. The one exception to this is the grade 1 page on Waves. I find it difficult to talk about light as waves without bumping into the fact that light also acts like a particle. I know if I don't do this, I will have one of the local physicists on me. Don't laugh, I've had a Nobel Prize winner complain about my treatment of gravity at grade 2. Despite this, we will use them as is.

A couple of things about the document. First, the PE is colorized based on the three dimensions. I liked how the NGSS webpage highlights the PE by its parts and links them to the boxes. Below this are the prior knowledge (What they should know) and the terminal knowledge (What they learn next). As generalist, I find many elementary classroom teachers do not see the big picture of science and how it develops. It also emphasizes how the NGSS is developmental. . Without a firm foundation in science and engineering, students can not catch up (e.g. science has to be taught as a performance based content. Reading about science is not enough).

The colored table below that simply breaks out each dimension of the PE. Note the highlighted word in the DCI box. I am also keeping spatial connections front and center as we develop the curriculum (See the three part series on why spatial thinking is important). The writer's job is to think divergently. Come up with as many enduring understandings and driving questions as possible with the goal of pulling all three parts together. As they do this, I am hoping their minds are whirling on possible ideas for the scenario. Cue next template.

GRASPS originated from Understanding by Design as a Mad Libs for developing performance based assessments. Similarly, the Buck Institute for Education (BIE) has a variant called the Tubric. Whichever one you use, the premise is to establish the parameters of the performance.

You will note that my workflow is non-linear. It was not always so. I initially had a checklist of steps, but each time I read it found myself rearranging steps. It then dawned on me that my source of consternation came from that fact that these early steps would not be linear. The premise for the scenario will evolve while the PEs are unpacked. Likewise the driving questions would need to focus on applying knowledge in order to create a solution to unit the problem.

I will let you know in a week how this step goes, before going to much further down the workflow.

Once Upon A Time and Why It Matters Today

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 15:38:00 +0000

Once upon at time, I was told to share my story and how it influenced my path in life. When I was in Kindergarten at Lower Chanceford Elementary School (now demolished), I distinctly remember being asked to come into a small room with a strange little man and asked a lot of questions. I even remember being asked when Columbus discovered America. Afterwards, I would watch everyday as a small group of students would move to the back of the room, behind a chalkboard. Something mysterious and magical happened back there that I was never part of. Fast forward to my second year in college as an education major. I was taking the obligatory educational psychology class when the inevitable discussion about IQ testing came up. It sparked a memory. I called my mother that night and asked how I did on what I deduced was an IQ test back in Kindergarten. Her response was something to the extent that I had missed the "cut score" by two points and that I had an learning disability called auditory processing disorder. In short, it means that unlike most men, I have non-selective hearing. This was a lot of fun in the era of open classrooms. As I would later learn in my special education courses, I am what is referred to as Twice Exceptional or GT/LD. Yes, you can be "gifted" and "learning disabled".

Once upon a time, this used to be called gifted, but the label was the primary focus rather than the service provided. This takes us back to my story. I put "gifted" and "learning disabled" in quotes because the terms are so nebulous. For some reason we recognize that there are a variety of learning disabilities but less likely to recognize different types of giftedness. We tend to lump gifted kids into broad categories with narrow expectations. The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) defines gifted children as "gifted individuals are those who demonstrate outstanding levels of aptitude or competence in one or more domains." I don't see this as a functional definition. That is to say, I don't know how to meet the needs of those students or even if the curriculum is not meeting their needs. The assumption is that we are not meeting their needs.

So, what does this have to do with transitioning to the NGSS. Well, it has more to do with the curriculum philosophy we are using to develop the new science curriculum. As we work towards a personalized learning environment, the selection of student learning objects becomes very important. Perhaps more importantly, will be what we decide to do for students who already demonstrate mastery of content. Rather than coming up with elaborations after the fact, why not build them up front. The great challenge we as educators face is seeing improvements in ALL students. This includes those that have demonstrated competence in an area of study.

Historically, we spent vast quantities of time trying to bring the bottom up and leaving the top to fend for themselves. However, in this age of "Student Learning Outcomes" where all students must show growth, what do you do for the students already performing at high levels of expectation. For example, the student that comes into your class already able to demonstrate their knowledge of physics by building a paper rocket that can reach an expected height and discuss how forces influence the flight of the rocket. If that student builds the same rocket at the end of the unit and shows no improvement, have we not failed that student? It is not that we have to stop worrying about students with special needs, but we have developed great skills in having these students show growth. Indeed, I believe Title I schools will get the recognition they finally deserve for the work they have been doing. The shock will be when traditionally high achieving skills do not show gains.

So why change to the NGSS?

noreply@blogger.com (ericromwell) — Wed, 28 May 2014 00:58:00 +0000

Long time no blog. Sorry for the absence. I've been a little busy with our STEM Fair. When 2000 people show up to your house, it takes some time to prepare. I will discuss the STEM Fair in a later posts and what its future MAY holds for us. The reason I am not talking about it now is, well. I have to get permission to do what I want to do first. I'm sure many of you have been following the discussion on the NSTA listserv to teach the "SCIENTIFIC METHOD" or not. Clearly the NGSS makes it clear that separating practice from content is not the way to go, but then what? Stay tuned.

My timidity in discussing it as this point is due to the fact that I have to make sure the principals (all 110) are on board before making the change. STEM Fair is not small undertaking. For those of you that have suffered through the science fair process as a teacher and/or parent can appreciate the consternation it can frequently wreak. So, any change has to be proceeded with a input from all stakeholders. A lesson I learned the hard way many moons ago.

The webinar I am doing is to present the transition plan; most of which you have seen here. It is also to seek input from principals for those things I have not considered. Undoubtedly, time will come up. It is as inevitable as death and taxes. So here is my response at this point. Expecting to teach science for thirty minutes a day is a waste of time (cue GASP). If you go back to my blog entry on "Rough Estimates of Unit Length", I have some idea of how long it will take to teach all that is asked in the NGSS. With these estimates in mind, I went back to our current suggested schedule and did some calculations based on a daily schedule and if the same time was compressed into longer times but less days during the week. Would I like to have an hour a day? Yes, but I know the demands of the elementary day do not make it feasible. Instead of asking for more total time. I just want the time allotted to be used for efficiently.

Please do not take these times as suggested instructional blocks, but look at them as another way to think about the daily schedule.

With that out of the way, the next inevitable question is "Why change?" I won't take credit for this. The idea came up at our latest state meeting. One of my fellow curriculum supervisors (name omitted to protect the innocent) reminded the assembled that the last standards were written in 1996. Starting there, she took the principals on a little journey of what has changed since 1996. I borrowed that idea and created a slide to illustrate some of the changes.

Just for some context. Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected to a second term. The other guy was our superintendent (which is only relevant if you are a local). The gray scale picture is what NASA thought was evidence of life on Mars. Coincidentally, the movie "Independence Day" where aliens come and try to take over came out. Dolly the sheep was cloned. Mad cow disease flared up in the UK. The iconic Macintosh "blueberries" started appearing in classrooms. Digital storage capacity swelled with the 100mb Zip Drive. The cell phone of the age had to be shown. Not the brick of "Wall Street", but close. Lastly, gas prices went climbing past one dollar. In another coincidence, Toyota brought out the first Prius. So, why change? The fact of the mater is science and now engineering are dynamic. If progress continues, expect another set of standards by 2023. If, I don't post again, you will know that I did not survive the presentation.