Instructional Sequence Matters, Grades 6–8: Structuring Lessons With the NGSS in Mind

By Patrick J Brown

Instructional Sequence Matters shows how to make simple shifts in the way you arrange and combine activities to improve student learning. It also makes it easy for you to put the NGSS into practice. After explaining why sequencing is so important, author Patrick Brown provides a complete self-guided tour to becoming an “ explore-before-explain” teacher. He explains that this teaching mindset helps students construct accurate knowledge firsthand, which is an important component of all science learning.
The book focuses on two popular approaches for structuring science lessons: POE (Predict, Observe, and Explain) and 5E (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate). You get guidance on how to create your own 5Es that translate the NGSS. And you get ready-to-use lessons featuring either a POE or 5E sequence to teach about heat and temperature, magnetism, electric circuits, and force and motion. Throughout, reflection questions spark thinking and help you develop the knowledge to adapt these concepts to your own classroom. Instructional Sequence Matters is a one-stop teaching resource for developing lessons that support both the NGSS and contemporary research on how students learn science best.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NSTA
• Release date: Sep 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781681405858

Book preview

Activity Box: Reflecting on Teaching and Learning

Keep a reflective journal of your thoughts, questions, and ideas about learning. Think about how your ideas about learners and learning have implications for classroom practice. Revisit and add to your thoughts about learners and learning as you read and revisit key ideas in Chapter 1. Make sure to highlight and annotate one or more ideas in the chapter that strike you as significant.

This first chapter rests on a single premise with far-reaching implications: If we want to produce more powerful learning for students, then we need to ground our practice in current research on teaching and learning. What we know about students’ intellectual abilities and knowledge development is much different from what it was 20 or 30 years ago. Students bring ideas to the classroom that are abstract and sophisticated. Children form complex ideas about how the world works based on direct experiences with their environment. From a very early age, kids observe their settings and are inquisitive about the natural world and their surroundings. They ask questions and actively seek out answers to their questions based on their experiences. Students form rudimentary theories using basic statistics and probability, and they develop principles to describe how the world works. Studies on cognition of early learning show that kids’ play is an attempt to understand the way scientists do through experimentation (Gopnik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl 1999). Experiences outside of school form the knowledge children bring to the classroom. Students start school with scientific ideas that help them explain phenomena and solve problems.

A strong finding from Taking Science to School is that advances in the learning sciences are a noticeable departure from earlier views that assumed kids pass through concrete stages of intellectual development and can gain certain abilities only by getting older (Duschl, Schweingruber, and Shouse 2007). The literature on brain sciences and cognition simply has not supported the premise of rigid stages of development. Stage-like phases of cognitive development ignore students’ inborn curiosity and problem-solving abilities as well as the central role effective and supportive instruction plays in learning (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking 2000). Although variability within any age group is large, research shows that students can accomplish remarkable advances in scientific reasoning with effective instruction and firsthand experiences (Duschl, Schweingruber, and Shouse 2007). The reality is that students’ experiences serve as the foundation for future learning and for developing more sophisticated understanding. Supportive environments nurture, build, and sustain students’ thinking