Yes the entire webinar is being recorded and will be sent out to participants along with an FAQ document of questions that are left unaddressed or not answered during the time.

Hey Sean! Thanks for joining!

A natural occurrence that can be investigated

Things that make students wonder and ask questions

Excellent responses. Thank you all for joining and participating.

I don’t know when this question will be appropriate, but how would you define sense-making?

This is a great question. This would be most appropriate to address during our Q & A session, but briefly - it can be captured in trying to identify where students are at along the pathway of being able to develop a scientific explanation for a particular phenomenon. In other words, we want students to wrestle with questions they have raised but also be able to identify certain landmarks in their ability to explain something puzzling. That “sense-making” will evolve as they explore new phenomena and develop deeper understanding of a core idea.

Thank you!

Great question Todd, we will be able to answer that at the end of the session. There are some criteria that is used when considering phenomena that we will share in the resouces.

Excellent question, Todd. Thanks for joining. Think of the continuum of good —> great as how instructionally productive the phenomenon is. There are many fascinating things that occur in the world for students to explore - the list is endless quite frankly. However, great phenomena are instructionally productive, explicitly connected to targeted DCI’s. The critical question is “Does the phenomena have the ability to take kids to the place you need to take them?”

Wolves of Yellowstone and how drastically they have changed the ecosystem

Will you all post questions, because I can not see everyone’s chat

spinning in a chair with a spinning bike wheel… classic physics demo, but sparks a lot of questions and leads into angular momentum

Hot air balloons

a seed becoming a tree

how storms form (doing hurricanes soon)

Collision unit - why don’t woodpeckers get concussions?

First year back in the classroom for several years, so this is all brand new to me. :)

Houses built on different locations and where they would survive the best

characterisitics of life- a monarch chrysalis; how does the bag of juice survive?

Vocal should come after learning the idea :)

vocab*

So magnets attracting is not an appropriate phenonmenon?

Yes Leah, vocabulary should be learned in the moment, when it is needed.

Leah, THAT has been crucial when teaching my bio concepts! “You guys already know this stuff! Let’s translate it to “Biology language”!”

Detra, did my response to that question address what you are curious about?

Awesome! I say there’s a fancy science word for this and you already know what it means!

So Mike, the magnets would be more classified as a discrepant event, which may not be aligned with any DCIs?

I would say so, yes. However, I would challenge you to identify which DCI’s that can connect to - thus providing context and a pathway for your students to use it as a vehicle to develop a scientific explanation of something puzzling.

Thank you!

You got it! Excellent questions. Keep pressing yourself on exploring those things. Fantastic job.

We are doing that for the purpose of the webinar but this is a great question that we should discuss during the Q & A. I think the question is “What are the best ways to engage students in a phenomenon you have selected?”

A network in important, this can be difficult

Twitter!

How do we pick phenomena for complex topics that are age/level appropriate? i.e.: Lewis Dot Structures.

Also, show we design units so that they can always have at least one phenomena to build upon? Or do some units just not have a phenomena we can use effectively?

Yes. Like the NGSS Educators page on Facebook. It is a tremendous resource of people sharing and looking for ideas. #NGSSChat is a great Twitter resource. Visit the web resources and contact us through nextgenstorylines.org. Reach out to Achieve. Each state has someone responsible for the NGSS development in that state through Achieve. They are all tremendous resources.

Smelling a substance from a distance….you bring in a substance

Do you have any 6th grade examples?

Give students a cookie to eat and ask them why it comes out very different than how it went in…?

Good question, Jennifer. I would describe IQWST as a phenomena-driven curriculum. We are not interchangeably using the terms phenomena and curriculum. They are not synonymous. However, phenomena are critical to developing meaningful and engaging curriculum for students.

Thank you for joining!!