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Standards in this strand:

Text Types and Purposes:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.1.a
Introduce claim(s) about a topic or issue, acknowledge and distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and organize the reasons and evidence logically.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.1.b
Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant, accurate data and evidence that demonstrate an understanding of the topic or text, using credible sources.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.1.c
Use words, phrases, and clauses to create cohesion and clarify the relationships among claim(s), counterclaims, reasons, and evidence.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.2
Write informative/explanatory texts, including the narration of historical events, scientific procedures/ experiments, or technical processes.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.2.a
Introduce a topic clearly, previewing what is to follow; organize ideas, concepts, and information into broader categories as appropriate to achieving purpose; include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., charts, tables), and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.2.b
Develop the topic with relevant, well-chosen facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples.

Production and Distribution of Writing:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.4
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.5
With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.6
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas clearly and efficiently.

Research to Build and Present Knowledge:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.7
Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.8
Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively; assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.

Range of Writing:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.10
Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Note

Students' narrative skills continue to grow in these grades. The Standards require that students be able to incorporate narrative elements effectively into arguments and informative/explanatory texts. In history/social studies, students must be able to incorporate narrative accounts into their analyses of individuals or events of historical import. In science and technical subjects, students must be able to write precise enough descriptions of the step-by-step procedures they use in their investigations or technical work that others can replicate them and (possibly) reach the same results.

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English Language Arts Standards " Writing " Grade 6-8

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Text Types and Purposes: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.1.a Introduce claim(s) about a topic or issue, acknowledge and distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and organize the reasons and evidence logically. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.1.b Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant, accurate data and evidence that demonstrate an understanding of the topic or text, using credible sources.

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Standards in this strand:

Text Types and Purposes:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.1.a
Introduce claim(s) about a topic or issue, acknowledge and distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and organize the reasons and evidence logically.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.1.b
Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant, accurate data and evidence that demonstrate an understanding of the topic or text, using credible sources.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.1.c
Use words, phrases, and clauses to create cohesion and clarify the relationships among claim(s), counterclaims, reasons, and evidence.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.2
Write informative/explanatory texts, including the narration of historical events, scientific procedures/ experiments, or technical processes.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.2.a
Introduce a topic clearly, previewing what is to follow; organize ideas, concepts, and information into broader categories as appropriate to achieving purpose; include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., charts, tables), and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.2.b
Develop the topic with relevant, well-chosen facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples.

Production and Distribution of Writing:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.4
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.5
With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.6
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas clearly and efficiently.

Research to Build and Present Knowledge:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.7
Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.8
Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively; assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.

Range of Writing:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.10
Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Note

Students' narrative skills continue to grow in these grades. The Standards require that students be able to incorporate narrative elements effectively into arguments and informative/explanatory texts. In history/social studies, students must be able to incorporate narrative accounts into their analyses of individuals or events of historical import. In science and technical subjects, students must be able to write precise enough descriptions of the step-by-step procedures they use in their investigations or technical work that others can replicate them and (possibly) reach the same results.

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English Language Arts Standards " Writing " Grade 6-8

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Text Types and Purposes: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.1.a Introduce claim(s) about a topic or issue, acknowledge and distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and organize the reasons and evidence logically. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.1.b Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant, accurate data and evidence that demonstrate an understanding of the topic or text, using credible sources.

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This page contains resources that we've developed with our teacher colleagues. These are brief papers that attempt to translate what the research tells us about important features of our classroom practice. Below we describe what these are, why they are important and we give a brief excerpt.

Discourse Primer.All of the ambitious teaching practices depend upon the teacher being able to orchestrate student talk in the classroom. This primer provides lots of basic information about how to encourage students to talk in productive ways, both with you and with each other, about science.

Talk is a natural activity that we all engage in. As part of our daily lives we use words in various combinations to create speech, and with speech we get work done such as asking questions, providing information, and explaining ideas to one another. But discourse in classrooms can be quite unlike that in our everyday life- there are unfamiliar words that get used, different kinds of work that need to get done with speech (comparing two science explanations, arguing with evidence, critiquing a model, etc.), and rules for participating that aren't always clear.

How you can develop anchoring events. One overarching goal of ambitious teaching is to help students develop evidence-based explanations for science phenomena. This document explains how to use your curriculum and the standards to select compelling phenomena ("anchoring events") for your students to explain over time.

Consider three very common problems for students trying to learn science: 1) They often experience instruction as a series of unrelated and isolated lessons, one after another. They don't understand how readings or new concepts fit in with bigger science ideas. 2) They don't know why they are doing particular science activities-when asked they will say "Because the teacher wants me to." 3) They don't see how science relates to their everyday experiences or how their lived experiences can be used as resources to help them and others learn important science ideas. The root of all three of these problems is that there is nothing on the horizon for students to focus on. There is no genuine puzzlement, interest, or larger learning goal that they are aware of. Consequently the motivation for learning dissipates and they disengage from learning activities. In our Framework for Ambitious Science Teaching, the first phase in any unit of instruction is the teacher planning to engage students in big science ideas.

Models and Modeling- An Introduction. It is important to know what counts as a scientific model and what the scientific practice of modeling might look like in your classroom. Scientific modeling is an activity that helps students reason about important events and processes; it makes their thinking visible and helps you guide changes in students' reasoning.

Modeling is the process by which scientists represent ideas about the natural world to each other, and then collaboratively make changes to these representations over time in response to new evidence and understandings. Models appear as drawings on whiteboards in laboratory hallways, as diagrams in research articles, and even as sketches on napkins. Wherever they appear, they are, or will be, an object that reflects changes in thinking about some set of ideas. Models don't just reflect reasoning, they also stimulate new ideas.

Group work is a chance for students to learn from others, to problem-solve collaboratively, and to develop pro-social behaviors. Working regularly in small groups opens up many more chances for students to "talk science" than they would ever get in whole group discussions.

One of the central aims of science is to create explanations for events and processes that happen in the natural world. To be accepted in the scientific community, explanations have to be supported by evidence. Explanations and arguing from evidence are also important science practices for students to engage in...

This paper describes a "toolkit" of face-to-face for use in your classroom. We call them "face-to-face" because they are used with students. All the types we discuss have two things in common. First, they represent students' ideas and are constructed, at least in part, by students themselves. Second, they change over time as students learn from observations, experiments, readings, presentations of ideas, and listening to the logic of their peers and the teacher.

The process of telling by the teacher is often referred to as direct instruction. In research on learning however, scholars call productive versions of this just-in-time instruction, because the choices of which ideas to expand on are often driven by students. They feel a need to know more in order to make progress, rather than having the teacher delivering information to them that they don't know what to do with.

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This page contains resources that we've developed with our teacher colleagues. These are brief papers that attempt to translate what the research tells us about important features of our classroom practice. Below we describe what these are, why they are important and we give a brief excerpt.

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doing this in a PLC is strongly recommended

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The Next Generation Science Standards ("NGSS") and the NGSS logo are registered trademarks of Achieve. Neither Achieve nor the lead states and partners that developed the Next Generation Science Standards was involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.

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This web series provides summary info about SEP's, DCI's, and CCC's.

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Anatomy and Physiology AP Biology AP Chemistry AP Environmental Science AP Physics Biology Chemistry Earth Science Educational NGSS - Next Generation Science Standards Physics Statistics & Graphing

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CrossCutSymbols

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) include 7 Crosscutting Concepts that are the big ideas that connect the sciences and help to understand nature. Students who understand the NGSS crosscutting concepts will have a deep framework for integrating and understanding science ideas.

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The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) include 7 Crosscutting Concepts that are the big ideas that connect the sciences and help to understand nature. Students who understand the NGSS crosscutting concepts will have a deep framework for integrating and understanding science ideas.

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This site is a curated collection of science phenomena for the NGSS, along with phenomenon based learning resources and help for how to use phenomenon to drive student questions in the classroom centered around 3 dimensional teaching and learning.

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Improving Science Education Through Three-Dimensional Learning

Quick Search Next Generation Science Standards

THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF SCIENCE LEARNING

Within the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), there are three distinct and equally important dimensions to learning science. These dimensions are combined to form each standard-or performance expectation-and each dimension works with the other two to help students build a cohesive understanding of science over time.

Crosscutting Concepts help students explore connections across the four domains of science, including Physical Science, Life Science, Earth and Space Science, and Engineering Design.

When these concepts, such as "cause and effect", are made explicit for students, they can help students develop a coherent and scientifically-based view of the world around them.

Science and Engineering Practices describe what scientists do to investigate the natural world and what engineers do to design and build systems. The practices better explain and extend what is meant by "inquiry" in science and the range of cognitive, social, and physical practices that it requires. Students engage in practices to build, deepen, and apply their knowledge of core ideas and crosscutting concepts.

Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs) are the key ideas in science that have broad importance within or across multiple science or engineering disciplines. These core ideas build on each other as students progress through grade levels and are grouped into the following four domains: Physical Science, Life Science, Earth and Space Science, and Engineering.

More about 3D Learning

GET TO KNOW

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are K-12 science content standards. Standards set the expectations for what students should know and be able to do. The NGSS were developed by states to improve science education for all students.

A goal for developing the NGSS was to create a set of research-based, up-to-date K-12 science standards. These standards give local educators the flexibility to design classroom learning experiences that stimulate students' interests in science and prepares them for college, careers, and citizenship.

Get to Know the Standards

IMPLEMENT

The NGSS call for a three-dimensional approach to K-12 science instruction. This represents a significant transition from previous state standards. That's why effective implementation demands a great deal of collaboration and patience among states, districts, schools, teachers, and students.

Thoughtful and coordinated approaches to implementation will enable educators to inspire future generations of scientifically literate students. That is the vision of the NGSS. This website provides a range of high-quality resources that empower educators, administrators, parents, and the general public to help bring this vision to life.

Find Tools and Resources

WHY

Science-and therefore science education-is central to the lives of all Americans.

A high-quality science education means that students will develop an in-depth understanding of content and develop key skills-communication, collaboration, inquiry, problem solving, and flexibility-that will serve them throughout their educational and professional lives.

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Home Page | Next Generation Science Standards

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Improving Science Education Through Three-Dimensional Learning Quick Search Next Generation Science Standards Within the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), there are three distinct and equally important dimensions to learning science. These dimensions are combined to form each standard-or performance expectation-and each dimension works with the other two to help students build a cohesive understanding of science over time.

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Bristol: Mary McCormick, Katie Mercieri, Elizabeth Porter | New Britain: Laura Cannon, ManjitKhosla, Mathew Lozefski, NaliniMunshi, Sudha Sikka, Rob Ramsey | Cromwell: Alissa Arcuri, MarissaHumphrey, Jennifer Ide | Portland: Jeane Baldwin, Kelsey Russo, Sue McDougall | Colchester: LesKershnar, Ben Desrochers, Cynthia Riordan| Salem: Michael Kane | Danbury: Amanda Peterson | Southington: Krista Tibbetts, Amy Capobianco, Toni-Ann Rock, Katherine Soltys | East Hartford: Annelies Rhodes, Stella Demand, Thomas Lonsdale | Waterbury:Robin Davit, MichealGomola, Jennifer Magnavice | Hartford: Ashley Bonet, Dawn Frazer, Rich Garuti, Kevin Jacobs, Mary Jane Kiloran, Melissa Gordon, Louise Pulyado| New Beginnings Family Academy:  Jason Feeney

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This project is funded by a federal grants under Title II of the No Child Left Behind Act (P.L. 107-110) administered by the State of Connecticut Office of Higher Education. $159,150 (72%) of the cost of the project was financed with federal funds. $63,152 (28%) was provided by non-federal sources.

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| Jeff Thomas, Project Director & SCI Instructor  | CCSU: Associate Professor of Science Ed. & Earth Science | thomasjed@ccsu.edu

| Nicholas Balisciano, co-Project Director & SCI Instructor  | Connecticut Science Center:STEM ProgramManager | nbalisciano@ctsciencecenter.org

| Marsha Bednarski, co-Project Director & SCI Instructor  | CCSU: Professor and Coordinator of Science Education | bednarskim@ccsu.edu

| Sally Drew: Co-ProjectDirector & Literacy Instructor | CCSU: Assistant Professor of Special Education and Interventions  | drewsav@ccsu.edu

| Theresa Bruckerhoff: Project Evaluator  | CRE: VP and Research Associate  | theresa@creus.com

| Kristine Larsen; SCI Instructor & Content Expert | CCSU: Professor of Astronomy  | larsen@ccsu.edu

| Yinka Oyewumi, SCI Instructor & Content Expert | CCSU: Assistant Professor of Hydrogeology | oyewumi@ccsu.edu

| Jeff McDermott,logistics coordinator | CCSU: Pre-service Sci. Ed. Student  | j.mcdermott@my.ccsu.edu

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NESSLIE, or the Next Gen Earth and Space Science Expertise, since the summer of 2015, has prepared over 40 middle school science teachers’ earth science content knowledge and pedagogy through intensive and focused professional development (PD). This project integrates NGSS three-dimensional learning and science-specific literacy practices (e.g. CT Core Standards). Over the three-year duration of NESSLIE, teacher participants from 15 districts completed seven NGSS middle school earth science units. These units explicitly address three dimensions: disciplinary core ideas (e.g. MS ESS2.D: Weather and Climate), science and engineering practices (e.g. engaging in argument from evidence), and crosscutting concepts (e.g. patterns). Very strong science-specific literacy practices, based on the CT Core Standards, (e.g. writing formal scientific or technical arguments) is seamlessly blended within each unit. During the academic year, participants adapted or adopted these project-team developed NGSS earth science units and them implemented them with their students and shared what they learned from these experiences. In addition, during the last year of NESSLIE, teacher participants developed their own units and implemented them with their own students.