NGSS - Danielle Tisdale

A: Explaining Phenomena or Designing Solutions: The lesson focuses on supporting students to make sense of a phenomenon or design solutions to a problem.
The whole wind column curriculum fits the NGSS criteria part A in a few ways, one of which is having a cohesive storyline throughout all of the lessons. The students also get to design their own solutions to the real world and relevant problem they are given.

D: Relevance and Authenticity: The lesson motivates student sense-making or problem-solving by taking advantage of student questions and prior experiences in the context of the students’ home, neighborhood, and community as appropriate.
The VTS we use for EE fits the NGSS Features and Quality Design part D: Relevance and Authenticity very well because most of the students that will experience the EE1 curriculum have personal experience with fires. The students make great connections with what they experienced during the Thomas Fire (or other fire) and use that previous knowledge to understand why it would be important to have sensors monitoring the fires. Students become engaged with this project not just because it is fun, but because they know it is a real world problem that has affected them and their families directly.