Weeks 6,7,8

If you have been following along with this blog, a few things have changed over the past several weeks (especially Week 5). Although we originally planned to teach some density lessons when introducing this unit, I have taken them out to save time and since they are not found in the standards. We did, however, include lessons on the periodic table because many of us find it difficult to teach atoms and elements without first looking at the periodic table. At Utt middle school, students were most interested in learning about the periodic table on a survey. We do not need to go in deep, just surface level organization and characteristics of the elements.

I was working with two teachers at Currie Middle School to track their pacing through the curriculum, but both have been adding their own teaching styles into the mix so that it is hard for others to follow. Of course, it is OK to find your own style within the curriculum.  Just be careful to not take too long on old practices that could probably be taken out as we shift to the NGSS. We are finding big differences in pacing among teachers and we are currently looking into why this might be the case in PLCs.  An emphasis on hands-on labs with formal lab write ups is definitely taking up a lot of  instructional minutes in science classrooms at Currie as well as having students complete journal entries. These are still valid practices in teaching science, but as we shift to NGSS make sure you are asking yourself:

• Is there a clear learning goal of this learning activity?
• Does it meet at least two of the three dimensions of NGSS?
• Is it helping support students to meet the NGSS standards we are working on?
• Are students receiving feedback to help grow their science skills?

If you are finding it hard to answer yes to the questions above, it is probably a practice that it is time to get rid of.  Our curriculum is taking very long to get through and it will be tough to teach all of the standards in one year. Taking the time to really reflect on the value of our practices will help gain instructional minutes back in our classrooms.

As we move forward from this point, I will be looking at the weekly agendas of several 7th grade teachers as they work their way through our curriculum to try and piece together a weekly agenda.  I may need to adjust the pacing a bit, but here are the next several weeks that will include NGSS assessment 1.1  on atomic structure and begin to introduce 1.2 on states of matter.

The modeling for 1.2  can be done in a variety of ways. Here is an example of how some students are attempting to explain their understanding in Jana's class.

Week 6 Agenda

Week 7 Agenda

Week 8 Agenda