Unpacking topics like “earthquakes,” “solubility,” or “cellular respiration” begins with identifying all the big ideas mentioned in the Next Generation Science Standards. It means seeing how they relate to one another, then figuring out which ideas are at the heart of really understanding the topic. We have a basic practice we use to do this; it’s called the card sort. This activity is best done, of course with colleagues.
Card Sort Using NGSS
Ambitious Teaching—An overview
In this video we illustrate what Ambitious Teaching looks like in classrooms ranging from high school to kindergarten. The practices were developed through collaborations between teachers and researchers, and they are continually evolving as we learn more about how they work with young learners. There are several themes that you’ll see in all examples, such as a focus on puzzling and complex phenomena, opportunities to make sense through talk, making thinking visible, attending to who is participating, using various forms of scaffolding and tools, and much more.
This site is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Award #1907471 and #1315995