NGSS Lesson Screening- Juliana

Criterion A. Explaining Phenomena or Designing Solutions

“Lessons work together in a coherent storyline to help students make sense of phenomena.”

In CE1, students are introduced to “fair tests” and the concept of forces that are acting on the parachutes. In CE2, students become more familiar with the engineering design process. In both of these pre-classroom extensions, students learn about the practices they will be using in the engineering exploration. I think that the CE2 especially will help students understand the challenge better when they get to EE1, as it is a very similar engineering design challenge. In order to make CE1 more relevant to the engineering exploration at MOXI, the EE1 lesson could incorporate a review of fair tests and possibly a chart to record their data. This will help students understand that they need to complete multiple tests that are consistent with each other in order to get accurate data and show whether or not their pennyship design is successful.

“Students get direct experience with a problem or phenomenon that is relevant to them and is developmentally appropriate.”

In my experience facilitating EE1, during the discussion about the picture of the fire with a large plume of smoke, many students will bring up the Thomas fire or other fires that have occurred in our region. This makes the problem that is being solved in the activity more relevant to the students. However, I think that one issue with this is that it is sometimes difficult for the students to make the jump from solving the issue of fighting fires to solving the issue of creating a device that will hold a sensor that will give us information about the fire. This problem usually has to be explained to the students as they cannot make this jump on their own. It might be helpful to find some video that specifically refers to this issue of firefighters using information from the smoke plume in order to predict the fire’ behavior. This would make the problem more realistic and relevant to the students so that they can focus on the issue of creating a device that will hover inside the wind columns.

Criterion E. Student Ideas

“Students have opportunities to share ideas and feedback with each other directly”

EE1 provides many opportunities for students to share their ideas with the teacher asking questions and students raising their hands and sharing with the class. One challenge with this method is that sometimes it causes only a few students to be answering questions, and keeping shyer students from sharing their ideas. This can be prevented by providing more opportunities for students to have ~1 minute discussions with a partner, so that everyone can have a chance to communicate their ideas.

“Student artifacts include elaborations of reasoning behind their answers, and show how students’ thinking has changed over time.”

In the worksheet for CE1, students are asked to predict which sized parachute will fall the slowest. For older groups (grades 3+), it may be helpful to have a space for students to write down their reasoning for why they predicted the way that they did. This will allow students to take time to think through why they chose that answer before the teacher opens up the class discussion of predictions.