The Next Generation Science Standards, or NGSS standards, are new, internationally-benchmarked guidelines for science and engineering education in grades K-12. The new standards reflect an entirely new approach to teaching science in the United States and offer a framework for science education that better reflects the needs of modern society.

The NGSS standards were reviewed by tens of thousands of experts across the nation, including teachers at every grade level, specialists in science education, educational researchers, and science policy experts. Currently adopted in 16 states and available nationwide, the NGSS standards emphasize the integration of science content and practice.

The Goals of the NGSS Standards

There are many reasons why new standards matter now. Until the NGSS standards were developed, states depended on the National Science Education Standards from the National Research Council (NRC) and Benchmarks for Science Literacy from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to guide the development of their state science standards.

While these resources remain solid, they are nearly 15 years old and science and technology have changed immeasurably in that time. To address this, the Next Generation Science Standards are less focused on teaching rote content (which could quickly become out of date) but rather encourage a holistic, hands-on approach to learning, and teaching, science.

Additionally, there’s a growing belief in the science community that the future global success of the United States depends on strong growth in the science, technology, and engineering sectors (STEM). For the United States to compete globally and for American students to pursue the expanding employment opportunities in science and technology-related fields, students today must have a robust and coherent foundation in science, engineering, and technology. In fact, in 2009, a commission of distinguished researchers from the Carnegie Foundation concluded that “the nation’s capacity to innovate for economic growth and the ability of American workers to thrive in the modern workforce depend on a broad foundation of math and science learning, as do our hopes for preserving a vibrant democracy and the promise of social mobility that lie at the heart of the American dream.”

How does NGSS Work?

The Next Generation Science Standards were developed around three “areas of study,” or dimensions, which the student pursues for the entirety of their K-12 education. This is significant because a key component of the NGSS standards is their consistency. Currently, science education across the United States remains inconsistent, and though the existing guidelines are robust, the courses are taught in isolation from each other. The current guidelines fail to provide a framework that connects and builds on every year of education. For example, biology and chemistry are taught as separate classes with separate teachers, making each subject open to a variety of interpretations. So as a result, there is no consistency when it comes to the knowledge high school students are taking with them into college and their careers. That’s why science standards matter now more than ever.

What are the Three Dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards?

The foundation of the NGSS standards is a three-dimensional system of learning that includes Scientific and Engineering Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Disciplinary Core Ideas.

1. Scientific and Engineering Practices

The practice and methodologies of real-life scientists and engineers.

• Defining Problems and Asking Questions
• Developing and Using Models
• Planning and Carrying Out Investigations
• Analyzing and Interpreting Data
• Using Mathematics and Computational Thinking
• Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions
• Engaging in Argument from Evidence

2. Cross Cutting Concepts

Ideas that overlap across multiple branches of science and engineering.

• Cause and Effect: the idea that one process is responsible for another
• Patterns: a framework for understanding and analyzing repetition
• Systems and System Models: organizing principles
• Similarity and Diversity: commonalities and discrepancies across disciplines
• Scale, Proportion, Quantity: understanding size and growth
• Energy and Matter: the study of physical substance and how things work
• Structure and Function: principles of design and engineering
• Stability and Change: the study of equilibrium and evolution

3. Disciplinary Core Ideas

The four overarching science and engineering subjects deemed most crucial for post-secondary life.

• Physical Science
• Life Science
• Earth and Space Sciences
• Engineering, Technology, and Application

How do I Teach with the NGSS Standards?

As a completely new blend of science practice, scientific concepts and scientific content, the Next Generation Science Standards represent a change in how science and engineering are taught. For an educator, the new framework and accompanying jargon might feel difficult to navigate at first, but once you familiarize yourself with its structure and goals, everything starts to make a lot more sense.

Once you’ve got a good grasp on the three dimensions (also referred to as the framework, within NGSS documentation), sample classroom tasks are a good place to start. These example classroom tasks blend content, practices, and concepts from both the NGSS and the Common Core State Standards and offer a view into how an integrated science curriculum can be taught. The sample tasks also refer to the Common Core standards in Mathematics and English Language and demonstrate how the three can be used comprehensively to cover any subject.

Teachers across various science and engineering disciplines have collaborated on the creation of these sample tasks, which are the result of a vision of integrating science, engineering, and mathematics for classroom use. These sample tasks are available on the NGSS website, but before diving into the actual tasks, let’s look at how they are structured and how they are supposed to work.

What Comprises a Sample Classroom Task?

Each sample classroom task currently available online has seven sections. It begins with an Introduction, which is a short description of the task, the background information needed for the task and a unifying theme or question for the task. For example, in the sample classroom task titled “Colony Collapse Disorder and an Analysis of Honey Bee Colony Numbers,” the introduction defines Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and outlines the goal of this task for the student: to propose a solution for CCD and demonstrate this via a mathematical model. The introduction also includes the key pieces of research the student will have at their disposal: data from domestic honey bee populations in California and South Dakota. So already, just in the introduction, you have the topic (CCD), some background (the raw data), a goal to be reached (a solution to CCD), and a method of reaching it (mathematical modeling).

The second section is called a Standards Bundle and essentially lists all standards from NGSS and the Common Core that might be relevant to this sample task. This is important to the NGSS goal of interconnectivity across subjects and building on previous learning. The Standards Bundle lists out standards from NGSS, Common Core Mathematics, and Common Core English, all of which can be assessed via this task. In our sample on Colony Collapse Disorder, for example, the Common Core Math sections lists standards such as “reasoning abstractly and quantitatively” and “model with mathematics.” Under the Common Core English section, it lists “Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.”

So in teaching this sample classroom task, the Standards Bundle shows you, the instructor, how to assess a student’s ability within the NGSS framework as well as the Common Core. Every sample task includes this section, to see the context of how the new NGSS standards fit in with the existing Common Core.

The third section is called Information for Classroom Use and contains five sub-sections:

1. Connections to Instruction: this section contains recommendations for how the task can be taught within the classroom setting. In our CCD example, this section says that the task is aimed towards students in the 10th or 11th grade, as part of a Biology 101 course, as long as the student has taken Algebra.
2. Approximate Duration for Assessment Task: this section tells you how long the assessment should take. It suggests the overall amount of time needed to complete the task and offers recommendations on how to break up the time over multiple classes. Our example for CCD says this task should take between three and eight class periods of 45-50 minutes each.
3. Assumptions: this outlines the foundational knowledge required of both teacher and student to attempt this task. Our example says that teachers should be familiar with mathematical modeling, whereas the student should feel comfortable with function families and using plotting programs to fit a line or curve to the data. This allows the instructor to place the sample classroom task accordingly into their lesson plan, based on what knowledge the student will have at a given point.
4. Materials Needed: A self-explanatory but important section for educations. In our example, the sample task assumes that students have access to graphing calculators, computer plotting, or a spreadsheet program that allows students to input data and conduct regressions. The Internet will also be required so that the students can conduct further research on bee populations.
5. Supplementary Resources: This section lists potential sources for information available to both teacher and student, as they are relevant to the task.

The fourth section is called the Assessment Task, and this represents the part of the task that should be given to students. It gives them a larger context for the task and supplies all the activities and questions that make up the task, divided into digestible components. In our Colony Collapse Disorder example, there are eight chronological task components, each building on the previous. Task Component A, in our example, is “Use the provided data on honey bee populations to graph the change in U.S. bee colony numbers over time on a scatterplot.”

The fifth section is called Alignment and Connections of Task Components to the Standards Bundle and describes how each task component specifically assesses proficiency across all-related standards and how they integrate math, science, and engineering. It connects specific tasks to related guidelines in NGSS and the Common Core. So Task Component A from above addresses the student’s ability to use mathematics and computational thinking along with the crosscutting concept of Scale, Proportion, and Quantity—which refers directly back to the Next Generation Science Standards.

The sixth section, or Evidence Statements, includes a list of statements that specifically and clearly state the evidence for student proficiency on a task component. Each evidence statement is connected to a task component. In our Colony Collapse example, Task Component A asked the student to use the provided data to graph the change in bee colony populations in the United States. The related Evidence Statement reads that students must identify the mathematical function family that best fits the entire dataset, and write an equation to represent the data that fits within that function family.

The final section, called Rubrics, doesn’t yet exist in the available sample tasks, but in future tasks, this section will provide a scoring system for the task that reflects levels of student performance on a scale of basic to advanced.

Let’s look at another sample task, this one entitled “Analyzing Floods.” In full, the introduction reads as follows:

In the first half of 1993, a “perfect storm” of climatic and weather events sent a record amount of water flooding through the Upper Mississippi River Drainage Basin. Climate models predict that as the global climate changes, it is likely that there will be larger and more frequent storms, which will lead to larger flood events like the flood of 1993. In this task, students use recurrence intervals from the Mississippi River to estimate the expected size and frequency of 100-year and 500-year floods for historical data (1943 to 1992) and an imaginary future scenario where large floods are more frequent (1943 to 2021). They compare the recurrence interval versus discharge on semi-log scatterplots and consider data from global climate models to make evidence based-claims about how changing climate in a warming world will influence river discharge and flood events.

So already, you have context, background, and overarching goal. Under the various sections of the sample task, you’ll see the action steps assigned to the students, how these steps connect back to NGSS goals as well as the Common Core, and external resources for both teacher and student.

In Summary: NGSS Assessment for High School

As an example of what the integration of Next Generation Science Standards and the Common Core might look like, the sample classroom tasks offer educations a more detailed guideline for creating lesson plans, down to assignments, time breakdown, and data.

Currently, classroom assessment tasks are available for the middle and high school grade bands, and additional tasks (including for elementary school) will be added as they become available. Instructors are encouraged to modify these tasks to fit their classroom’s needs.

Have you tried a sample classroom task in your classroom? How was it? Do you think the standards give you enough information? For a more in-depth look on how to read the NGSS standards themselves, check out our article on how to read NGSS.

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