Using Summary Tables to Create Cohesion

As a former high school science teacher, I can attest to the fact that it is difficult to remember the specific lessons I taught, the order I taught them, and the key takeaways from each. My plan book was my best friend. A student was absent? Check the plan book. Support staff wants to know …

Our Favorite Freebies!

How often do you find yourself asking where you can find a certain activity, lesson, scientific phenomenon or engineering problem? Searching online for ideas is not uncommon, but it can be overwhelming. In less than one second, an internet search engine can return millions of responses to almost any question! But how do you know …

Raising the Level of Cognitive Thinking in NGSS

Over the years, as teachers, we have been focused on raising the level of cognitive thinking in our students by incorporating different tiers of Bloom’s Taxonomy or increasing the Depth of Knowledge Level. Do these principles still apply for the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Some say they don’t. You cannot go wrong with asking …

A New Type of Beginning: Starting your Virtual School Year Off

Are you inundated yet? Have you gotten more resources than you know what to do with for socially distant in-person teaching, hybrid teaching, or fully online teaching? Are you on your kitchen floor eating ice cream from the carton as you think about the year to come? If so, we get it! As we move …

Linking STEM and the Next Generation Science Standards

By now everyone involved in K-12 education is well aware of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). NGSS was developed out of concern for science education in the United States and the ability of our students to compete in a world with an ever-increasing demand on STEM careers and people to fill them. Incorporating STEM …

Citizen Science

I grew up in a Science family. My dad is a professor of Forest Ecology, my mom is a botanist. Needless to say the majority of memories from growing up involve the natural world. Hikes were interspersed with botanizing and impromptu identification quizzes. My 3 siblings and I all worked as research assistants at some …

Using Phenomenon to Drive a Unit

Learning about the use of Phenomena in NGSS aligned units has really been the bridge of understanding for me between how I have always known science should be taught and implementing the NGSS. I have spent the past year taking a deep-dive into the purpose of phenomenon and how we can utilize phenomenon in our …

Using a Makerspace with the Next Generation Science Standards

The Next Generation Science Standards place a greater emphasis on the Science and Engineering Practices (the doing of science) rather than some of the standards of the past. Of course, this is not completely new to educators in Connecticut, as our previous State Standards included similar inquiry components . But, now we’re expected to weave …