The public school teachers of Massachusetts are to implement new Science Technology/Engineering Standards come fall 2015. These new standards grow out of the United States national Next Generation Science Standards. These standards in turn complement the United States national Common Core Standards for math and English language arts.
How is a teacher to transition to these new standards? In order to begin to understand the standards two methods come to mind: focus on the novel emphases and compare the old and new standards. The new standards press us to help students come to understand and practice the methods of science such as modeling, argumentation and planning and caring out investigations. The content or disciplinary core ideas remain essentially the same but are reorganized into large overarching themes. The standards themselves are stated in goal oriented language such that they describe what a student is to do in order to learn and exhibit understanding. Here is an example of this approach applied specifically to the high school level biology standards. The theme of interest is modeling. Resources to support development of compliant lessons are included.
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