KnowAtom's Blog

The Great Recession was tough on everyone, especially Generation Z now entering today's workforce.

So why should the next generation have reason to be optimistic about their futures?

The answer, for some, can be found in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education that empowers students to think critically and solve problems. 

A strong STEM education can transform students’ ability to create, evaluate, and analyze in any 

Did you know that the Next Generation Science Standards have applications in art?

While including the arts with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEAM) may seem counterintuitive, the fact is that at their core, STEM and art have higher order thinking in common. STEAM learning is about creativity – discovery and invention – as well as analysis, communication, and critical thinking, all of which are essential to the creation and appreciation of art.

The Next Generation Science Standards require a very specific kind of resources that allow students to achieve mastery of the standards.

Mastery means that students have developed skills and knowledge that they can take what they have learned and apply it to new scenarios and contexts, which allows them to tackle any problem or question, rather than just predetermined ones.

Because of this shift, it is important to understand that not all curriculum and resources create mastery readiness because not all resources prepare students to think critically and develop transferable skills.

In general, curriculum and resources can be categorized into four levels relating to their ability to create "readiness."

The STEM cycle explains why all students must be exposed to STEM: because STEM skills are life skills. Locked in the STEM cycle are the seeds of critical thinking—creative, evaluative, and analytical thinking skills that are transferrable and that make students trainable. These skills are the key to workforce  development and the underpinnings of a student’s future college and career opportunities.

Phenomena driven instruction in NGSS-aligned classrooms clearly demonstrates that using these methods creates significantly higher percentages of advanced and proficient students versus their respective state's average.

The numbers you’re about to read might surprise you, but they have been collected carefully and are accurate representations of what you could be spending on high-quality STEM curriculum, provided you have a willingness to break out of that 7-year cycle.

The cost of implementing and maintaining KnowAtom is significantly lower than a district typically pays for ongoing STEM curriculum and materials costs.

Transitioning from the 7-year textbook adoption cycle most districts are familiar with to a yearly support approach may feel challenging at first, but it's perfectly possible. The first step is to capture current costs as a set point for what the district is already spending, while the second step is to determine what is reasonable for initial implementation of a new curriculum and sustainability of that curriculum over time.

While time-on-learning is an important element, you have to use it well in order to make a difference in student learning. That requires an intentional scope and sequence that is grade-specific. Each unit must support teachers through a carefully scaffolded series of units and lessons that builds on student understanding and is supported by the learning that came before.

As you help students engage with material as scientists and engineers in a next generation science setting, a cadence begins to emerge. It begins with nonfiction reading, then transitions to Socratic dialogue. This means a teacher is not projecting information to students, but is instead asking higher order questions that force students to make concept-to-concept, concept-to-self and concept-to-world connections. Then the progression transitions to student team investigations, where the students are actually planning how they're going to answer a question as a scientist or solve a problem as an engineer. That's what these standards are really focused on. They are performance expectations that create a classroom environment in which students can actually engage in the practices.

In order to bring the three dimensions to life in a science and engineering context, the teacher leads the class from nonfiction reading to Socratic dialogue, students plan and carry out investigations, and teams form conclusions which they then debrief about as a class.

Grit is a culture that teachers can create in their classrooms, especially as schools and districts begin to implement the Next Generation Science Standards. As educators or administrators, it's a culture that we can create in our schools and districts.

If that grit is truly a culture that permeates your buildings and district, it will instill a set of values that imbues classrooms at all grade levels and informs the school's entire approach to education.

A culture of grit is a culture that supports determination and direction, passion, and perseverance. You'll find that if you value these ideals, your team will become self-aware and will begin to support itself and its members in excellent STEM teaching.

A traditional model of goal-setting in which hatching duck eggs for "fun" is automatically integrated into the life science unit, which therefore has to be set in the spring, and is propped up by low-level activities such as worksheets, reading, and vocabulary. From there, many teachers steeped in the traditional model follow a trail from getting grades, teaching standards, covering the test, and passing tests, believing this means students ultimately being college and career ready. Unfortunately, statistics show that our students are not college and career ready.

The Next Generation Science Standards help facilitate the purpose and passion needed for a valuable learning environment. STEM is a cycle, and at each step of that cycle—and during each iteration—the standards help ensure that students see and understand that purpose.

STEM is a cycle, moving seamlessly from science—in which we gain knowledge that enables development of new technology—to engineering, in which we develop technology that solves human problems and make the study of science more effective. In between are technology, math, and knowledge.

Today I am proud to share a fascinating interview with iRobot CEO Colin Angle about artificial intelligence and its contribution to effective, engaging STEM education.

You will find all types of tribes in school systems, but large urban systems tend to concentrate members of tribes 1 through 4, while average school districts range from stage 2 to edging into stage 5. Suburban and rural districts tend to span stages 2 to 5.

Which range of tribes you find in a school is largely determined by the principal and the culture they've developed over time. But there are certainly other factors at play. While it's hard to say why large urban districts skew downward and rural districts skew upward, part of the reason may lie in the fact that in a suburban or rural environment, you have more permission for risk-taking. In a rural environment, after all, there are limited replacements for teachers, so they may have more job security, which allows them to feel safer taking risks.

It's hard to create change. It's hard to see success the way the next generation science standards (NGSS) call for when we begin getting stuck in limiting ideas such as:

• What we think children are capable of
• What we think we need to do to "cover the standards"
• What we think we need to do in order to teach to the test