ONLINE 3-D SCIENCE TEACHING and COVID

Here’s the nub: Covid + NGSS = Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for science education . . .

. . . If we teachers work together.

This blog addresses one question: How?

I will share with my fellow K–12 science-teacher colleagues decades of experience with implementing a 3-D curriculum model such as embraced by the NGSS — the Next Generation Science Standards that are bedeviling us in 44 out of 50 states. Before Covid, a 3-D model was my vehicle for getting all my kids to flexible higher-order thinking and, along the way, nailing any high-stakes exam. And I taught second grade to AP physics, in twelve different schools. You can do it too.

Call it fate, but that vehicle’s engine, developed over those decades, turns out to be the perfect solution for online teaching and learning a la Covid:

A teachers’ online co-operative sharing (and selling) their tried-and-true lessons . . .

. . . using a database designed for teaching to NGSS and higher-order thinking.

We can make lemonade from lemons, together. Our textbooks are useless. But a colleague somewhere sometime wrote the perfect lesson for that one kid you want to reach tomorrow. So let’s share, and let’s reinvent the teaching profession along the way, to our advantage. And not just effectiveness — time and dollars, too.

The Curriculum Cooperative has several thousand science learning activities and units designed to teach kids to transfer knowledge . . .

The NGSS has the right idea — a 3-D curriculum (concept – content – skill) can empower you to get any kid, any school, any community, any mix of resources to the highest levels of teaching and learning. But NGSS didn’t go much beyond the idea – The Curriculum Cooperative (CCoop: “see-see-co-op”) and its database put meaty flesh on its bare bones.

How? By building out the concept dimension. HINT: There are a lot more magical concepts than NGSS’s seven. We need them at a grain-size that fits classroom practice.

In CCoop, you choose from 180 rock-solid, cognitively-tested, transferable concepts, painstakingly defined and organized according kids’ cognitive development. Choose the one(s) key to your pre-Covid curriculum. Then . . .

Specifiy and choose learning activities that accommodate to your kids’ interests, skill levels, background, resources, time availability . . . using up to nineteen descriptors. Accommodate your own instructional and assessment strengths. Accommodate your school’s curriculum and learning goals. And when you have to write the student activity yourself: share it, benefit from your creativity, help your colleagues, and have them help you make it a better lesson.

There’s much ground to cover, and it starts with the minds-on, with NGSS.