NGSS and The Lawrence Hall of Science
UC Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science, home to our curriculum partner SEPUP, has played a major role in science curriculum development for decades. Learn how the Hall is addressing this new challenge and how the NGSS came about.
...the nation’s capacity to innovate for economic growth and the ability of American workers to thrive in the modern workforce depend on a broad foundation of math and science learning, as do our hopes for preserving a vibrant democracy and the promise of social mobility that lie at the heart of the American dream.
The three dimensions to learning science
There are three important dimensions to learning science in the NGSS. These dimensions combine to form each Performance Expectation. All three dimensions work together to help students build a meaningful understanding of science over time.
Science and Engineering Practices
Our learning activities combine the exploration of disciplinary core ideas with authentic science and engineering practices to make the knowledge more meaningful and students better equipped to meet the many challenges facing society today.
Crosscutting Concepts
These ideas help students explore crosscutting concepts (CCC) across the four domains of science. Our current middle school edition provides a platform for teachers to make many connections explicit. Our NGSS edition will provide this for them along with extensive support for teachers and students to use the CCC's as lenses for making sense of the natural world.
Disciplinary Core Ideas
We carefully select each unit issue to provide student motivation and context for the science content. It must be engaging to diverse students, foster debate, and require an understanding of important science concepts and processes in order to make evidence-based decisions.
Performance Expectations
Each instructional unit bundles several Performance Expectations (PEs); therefore, an activity may be part of several intertwined Learning Pathways. By the time that students reach the activity that incorporates the assessment related to the Performance Expectation, they will have interacted with the core ideas, practices, and crosscutting concepts multiple times in their learning journey.
USA's rank in science on the 2012 PISA out of 65 OECD education systems
Fraction of 8th-graders that scored below basic on the 2011 NAEP Science assessment
Percent of US graduates that failed to meet the readiness benchmark levels in science in 2012
NGSS and SEPUP
Lab-Aids® has been working with our curriculum partners to revise programs to more fully align with the NGSS. Some programs only need minor changes, since those programs served as shining examples in the industry.
SEPUP, one of our first curriculum partners, is currently working on revising its middle school programs to fully align them to the NGSS. Watch the video to see what they are doing.