Week 2 Blog

What did you learn this week:)

With our first lab and readings I learned about the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The most important takeaway of NGSS are the crosscutting concepts, science and engineering practices, and disciplinary core ideas. Crosscutting concepts encourage students to make connections between Physical Science, Life Science, Earth and Space Science, and Engineering Design. Science and engineering practices have students engage in practices to apply their knowledge of core ideas and crosscutting concepts. Disciplinary core ideas (DCIs) are the science concepts taught. 

After discussing NGSS, we learned about the characteristics of living things, and we made posters to show examples. There are 8 characteristics of living things, these include:

Cellular Composition → Whether it be unicellular or multicellular

Genetics and Heredity→ Having DNA

Maintaining Homeostasis → Actively maintaining stable conditions (human body temp. being between 97°F and 99°F). 

Growth & Change→ An example would be a plant going from a seedling to growing into a plant 

Movement→ Moving (fish-swim, plants-bloom, birds-fly)

Response To Stimuli→ Anything that causes a reaction (pulling hand back from hot stove)

Metabolism→ Converting food to energy

Reproduction→ Production of offspring

These are basic concepts that can be the foundation to teaching/learning life sciences.

How can you apply what you've learned to your teaching in the future?

The characteristics can be taught as an introduction to life sciences in a classroom. Then observations can be made to decide if something is a living thing or not. I liked the example of a goldfish and a goldfish cracker, this is a simple way of framing these ideas. Knowing the breakdown of standards will also help me as a teacher as well! Iowa uses NGSS (as does 19 other states), so if I decide to teach here (or even Illinois!) I will be able to use NGSS and the science standards to ensure I am teaching what needs to be taught and building the foundation my students will need.


What are new or remaining questions? 

✿ What does a standard test look like for a student in primary school?

✿ What can I do to test a student's knowledge? 

✿As science instruction becomes less of a priority, how can I integrate science instruction in math and reading?


 

Comments

  1. Faith RinehartSeptember 26, 2024 at 3:43 PM

    Hi Isabel, thank you for sharing your thoughts in this weeks blog post. I loved your question abut how we can integrate science instruction into reading and math. With science instruction becoming so limited, I feel it is important to still teach science and I liked how you thought about finding way to bring it into other subjects.

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