Using Snails to help students navigate the Experimental Design Template (HS-LS2-6)

Our classroom has a ten gallon aquarium (complete with snails, elodea, and lots of microscopic organisms) that has served as a useful system for introducing my Living Environment students to the Experimental Design Template. I introduced a question to them about how it might have been possible for the snails to survive the summer in the tank with no outside food sources. They immediately thought the snails ate the elodea... so it was the perfect opportunity to test their hypothesis. This template is available on our resources page. HS-LS2-6 Evaluate the claims, evidence, and reasoning that the complex interactions in ecosystems maintain relatively consistent numbers and types of organisms in stable conditions, but changing conditions may result in a new ecosystem.

Why do plants grow toward the sun?

Middle School Life Science Lesson:
Energy Transfer and Transformation in Photosynthesis

MS:LS 1-6: Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for the role of photosynthesis in the cycling of matter and flow of energy into and out of organisms.

Ultimately, we want students to have a deep understanding of how photosynthesis provides the connection between energy and matter in an ecosystem. Looking at this "Matter & Energy" graphic organizer, it's not going to be easy for students to truly explain this process (though I bet they all think they could!). 

From the set of Crosscutting Concepts Graphic Organizers in 11x17

Breaking the concept apart, however, allows student to focus on the individual components before putting it all together. I built this lesson so that students discover exactly what's going on inside the leaf when it absorbs sunlight. 

(A funny side-story that will serve as caution to you... I find a lot of great digital resources that we use in class. But sometimes this leads me down a path where I forget to do some traditional activities where students really can learn a lot by observing in class. In this case, I was looking for a way for students to see chloroplasts... and spent a half hour looking for the perfect pictures before I had the "Aha!" that we should just find them ourselves in spinach leaves by doing a microscope station! DON'T make the mistake of ignoring those tried and true experiences when you're writing 3D lessons!)

Link to full lesson slideshow with teacher notes

After completion of this lesson (it takes 2-3 class periods), students can begin to fill in the graphic organizer. They will have the inputs on the left and the beginning part of the process. To follow this lesson, students will next learn about glucose and how it's made, and about how carbon dioxide travels into the leaf to become a huge part of the "matter" involved in the process.

One phenomenon... two ways

Choosing a good phenomenon to have students explain is a critical step in designing 3D lessons. Fortunately, the best phenomena can be used to address multiple Performance Expectations; it just depends on how you want to use them. Great phenomena can anchor lessons for multiple grade levels and subject areas.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2267504/The-sealed-bottle-garden-thriving-40-years-fresh-air-water.html

I was inspired to think about a lesson that would use this phenomenon when Saranac Middle School's Rebecca Shuman posted on Instagram about her students making these really cool biosphere ecosystems. (Secretly I just wanted to fill my classroom with cool stuff like this.) What I didn't realize at the time was that Becky had developed an awesome lesson sequence (called "There is no Planet B") with the biospheres as the culminating experience. Becky's biosphere lesson incorporates MS:LS2-1 and 2-3 and serves to compare the model biospheres to the closed system of the Earth as a whole.

In my classroom, we used our miniature biospheres as a model for the larger human-designed ecosystems such as Biosphere 2 and the eventual (?) biospheres used to colonize Mars or other distant places. (MS:LS2-5) We plan to observe the biospheres throughout the course of the school year to monitor changes and to model the matter and energy flow in the system.

Link to the Ecosystems in Space lesson

How can we help you navigate the NYSSLS transition?

Do you or your colleagues wish there was someone to help with the NYSSLS transition? We've been working with local schools in the North Country, and would love to help others across New York State. We would love to hear from you!

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Looking forward to the STANYS conference... less than a week away!

A lot of exciting things are happening at the 3D Science Cafe, and we hope you can join us in the work we are doing to connect teachers, schools, and NYSSLS standards across New York State.

Will we see you at the STANYS Conference this weekend?? 

--Hall of Sections (Saturday 3-4 pm) - come visit us at the North Country table and get one of our new 3D Science Cafe stickers!

Check out our new 3D Science Cafe stickers available at STANYS!

--Workshop sessions offered by the Cafe's NYSSLS Transition Team and our collaborators (in order of appearance):

Physics Institute (X-26) Saturday 9:30 - 12:00... hosted by a great group of Physics teachers from around the state, including the North Country's Charlene Rydgren.
CTLE Approved: This institute will provide a strand of physics based professional development to help assist you in the transition to NYSSLS. Join us for “Science In Action” as all participants engage in a GRC, 3-D lesson centered on a phenomenon involving Hoops & Marbles. You will witness how science & engineering practices, along with cross-cutting concepts are used to teach core ideas for the performance expectation HS-PS2-1. From there, you will pick which one of three smaller groups you want to participate in. All groups will be following the same 3-D lesson template but will focus on different units. Your choices include: waves, energy or physics & engineering. Finally, we will reconvene as a whole group for a phenomena and resource share out. There will be discussion on what are good phenomena to incorporate into instruction planning, as well as what resources are accessible. Please bring any you are willing to share. Overall, teachers will collaborate to improve instruction, student achievement, content knowledge and to develop appropriate instructional strategies. You will see research based strategies that meet the needs of all learners and provides equitable learning environments. Use of student data & technology will be discussed. The Institute will run during Sessions A-26,27,28 and B-26,27,28.

Re-align Your Wheels (Don't Reinvent Them!) (D-12) Sunday 8:00 - 9:00... Cookie Barker NYSMT, SAR Biology Northeastern; Sarah Fink NYSMT, SAR Applied Sciences Northeastern
CTLE Approved: Making the leap to the NYSSLS means analyzing, adapting and extending current lessons in a manner consistent with 3-dimensional instruction. Participants will engage in a 3-D lesson showcasing the instructional strategy of gathering, reasoning, and communicating. Graphic organizers will help center the focus on crosscutting concepts, and the workshop will culminate in exploring phenomena by which to develop your own lesson performance expectations. Sound daunting? @3DScienceCafe will walk you through a way to organize this shift in instructional practice at any grade level or subject area.

Chemistry Institute: Practicing the Practices (Y-21) Sunday 9:30 - 12:00... this promising Chemistry institute includes the North Country's Sonal Patel-Dame.
CTLE Approved: Join us as we take a deeper look into the purposeful integration of the science and engineering practices into everyday instruction. Participants will be immersed in hands-on activities that could be used to address different phenomena and three-dimensional learning in their own classrooms. Time will be taken to reflect on how teachers could begin to or continue to integrate three-dimensional teaching this year and in the future. The Institute will run during Sessions E-21,22,23,24 and F-21,22,23,24.

Transform Your Phenomena into Phenomenal Lessons! (G-11) Sunday 1:45 - 2:45... Rebecca Shuman NYSMT, SAR Intermediate Northeastern
CTLE Approved: Don’t reinvent the wheel to drive your NYSSLS transition. Adapt existing phenomena to engage students in three dimensional science practices. In this workshop you will collaborate to improve instruction through the use of scientific phenomena. Participants will construct models, engage in arguments from evidence and identify cross-cutting concepts while increasing their understanding of the NYSSLS. Resources for adapting existing phenomena will be shared and examples from classroom experience will be provided.

Re-align Your Wheels...Part 2: From Realign to Storyline (H-12) Monday 8:00 - 9:00... Cookie Barker NYSMT, SAR Biology Northeastern; Sarah Fink NYSMT, SAR Applied Sciences Northeastern
CTLE Approved: So, you already have a few lessons aligned to NYSSLS; here’s your chance to work with @3DScienceCafe to create a cohesive unit. We’ll have you analyze a NYSSLS-aligned, three-dimensional unit (Energy Transfer and Transformation in Life Science) to model a storyline that can weave your lessons together into a cohesive unit. Strategies for organizing individual lessons with student handouts in 11 X 17 format will be shared. Participants will be given time, templates, and support to help create their own NYSSLS 3-D mini unit.

Please let us know if you've used the 3D Science Cafe's resources... it's great to get feedback to improve upon our ideas. We're getting excited to see you at STANYS!

How do leaves change color in the fall?

Middle School Life Science

MS:LS 1-6: Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for the role of photosynthesis in the cycling of matter and flow of energy into and out of organisms.

I've been looking for a good lesson to try out the Experimental Design & Report Sheet that Cookie Barker designed last year, and found it when thinking about the phenomenon of fall leaves. The series of lessons and investigations were really successful, and we stayed organized as a class for a whole week (due to an unfortunate series of fire drills interrupting class) thanks to Cookie's template.

Click here for a copy of the full lesson. 

How often have you thought, "If I only had the time..."?

We consistently hear (and echo the same sentiments) that the #1 barrier to the NYSSLS transition / implementation process is TIME! Teachers need the time to practice lesson planning, to unpack the standards, and to build a professional network of colleagues.

Guess what?? The 3D Science Cafe team is going to help you find that TIME!

Register for the workshop | See other Fall 2018 offerings from the NCTRC

3-D Science Cafe - NYSSLS Work Session In Collaboration with the SUNY Plattsburgh Master Teacher Program Join experienced NYSSLS facilitators and teachers for a day exploring and extending your knowledge of 3- Dimensional teaching and learning. The day will include time for teachers to experience a 3-D lesson, receive guidance in lesson planning and have the opportunities to work with others to generate materials compatible with NYSSLS. Please feel free to bring lesson ideas and questions. This workshop is open to all science teachers in the North Country. Open to: All teachers of science Prerequisite: None Instructors: New York State Master Teachers Date: Saturday, November 17 Times: 9:30am - 3:30pm Place: North Country Teacher Resource Center Cost: $135 (includes cost of lunch) Register by: November 9 6 CTLE hours Class limit: None

Unpacking Performance Expectations

It's nice to see that materials we've developed really DO work!

Have you tried any of our templates or resources yet? PLEASE mention us @3DScienceCafe or leave a comment below to give us some feedback.

Frayer-type 3D Lesson Planning Template for unpacking performance expectations:

3D Earth and Space Science - HS ESS 2-5... using the blog and template = planning success!

All The Colors in the Sky (Regents Chemistry) NYSSLS Lesson Study

This is a 3-D Chemistry lesson on the topic of Atomic Spectra and Energy Levels using the familiar flame test lab. The student presentation is shown, with the student guide that was created specifically for the lesson. At the end of the presentation is a 35 minute video that shows the lesson in it's entirety with a couple of reflective comments. Please feel free to leave comments below.

Making a scientific claim... it's more than just an opinion!

Middle School Life Science

Introduction to Life Processes: Identifying Patterns

In middle school life science, we started the year off by identifying patterns to show that all living things share similar characteristics. This year, we followed a 5E model to kick-start this concept that we will revisit all year long.

Engage
Students brought in objects that were either nonliving, living, or once-living / came from a living thing. We spent a lot of time examining the cool nature that ended up in the classroom... a salamander, a cactus, a caterpillar, some great rocks, lots of fall leaves, etc. This prompted some great conversations: "Do we need to add anything to the salamander's tank so it will survive the day?"... "Are the leaves that are off the tree still considered 'alive' if they are still green?" ... "What happened to the caterpillar? (Two days later when we spied a cocoon in the container.)"

Explore
Individually, students brainstormed what it meant to be "alive," recording their ideas on tiny post-it notes. Small groups then did a sort-and-classify activity: looking for patterns, grouping similar ideas together, and naming the categories they came up with. When we shared out as a class, we came up with seven distinct life processes. Students didn't necessarily come up with same science terms that we will use all year, but they did have categories such as "live in a certain environment," or "need to get/make food and use energy." All the groups quickly identified that living organisms contain genetic material that, when they reproduce, passes on to offspring.

Explain
At this point, we took a more formal step to identifying life processes, giving each one an official name. Here's the student worksheet (and teacher version) that we used. Since we tied these ideas back to the original objects that students brought in during the Engage phase, we defined biotic / abiotic at this point as well. Students had to explain the difference between "biotic" and "alive." We also posted the life processes in extra-large text in a prominent place in the classroom; we will come back to these every time we study a new topic this year.

Extend
In this activity, students had to research which of the life processes viruses exhibit. We started by simply searching for images of viruses so that students could see how diverse and interesting they are! Next, students read several articles and found that even scientists have a hard time determining if viruses should be considered "alive." We shared facts from our research as a whole class and listed these facts as "evidence" on a Claim/Evidence/Reasoning graphic organizer.

• Websites to use:
• https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/cells/viruses/a/are-viruses-dead-or-alive
• https://www.livescience.com/58018-are-viruses-alive.html
• https://askabiologist.asu.edu/questions/are-viruses-alive
• https://www.popsci.com/new-evidence-that-viruses-are-alive
• http://theconversation.com/are-viruses-alive-giant-discovery-suggests-theyre-more-like-zombies-75661
• Research Worksheet
• Claim/Evidence/Reasoning graphic organizer

Evaluate
Students now had to decide whether or not viruses should be considered a living thing. We used the C/E/R graphic organizer to choose a claim AFTER listing all the evidence. Then, students took some time to write down the reasoning behind their choice. They had to use the concepts of the seven life processes in their reasoning. Over the next two days, students worked to write a paragraph addressing the question, "Are viruses alive?" Some of them were able to use the graphic organizer to jump in and justify their claim. Others found that it was best to work from an outline that helped them organize their writing.

This whole unit, and especially the task of having students justify their claim with evidence, helped introduce multiple scientific concepts. It was also a good start to get students thinking about how a scientific claim is not simply someone's opinion. A claim is a statement backed up by evidence... students don't need to write, "I think that..." or "I believe that..." when making a claim. Having multiple pieces of evidence allows us to know that our claim can be supported. One student asked, "What happens when scientists find evidence that doesn't support their claim?" and this led to a short discussion of how scientific knowledge evolves over time.

Final Assessment
Students will have to apply their knowledge to classify a mystery organism as living or nonliving. We will also do this in Claim/Evidence/Reasoning format.

Glow Little Glow Stick...

Here's a lesson I just completed with my Regents Chemistry Class. It's early in the year and this is our intro to the structure of an atom and chemical reactions. It was a shining success! Check out the student work that is posted at the end of the slideshow. Several of these students were exposed to a few 3-dimensional lessons in my biology class last year.

Saving Barbie's Life

Additional information can be found: https://tinyurl.com/savingbarbie

How Fast do Dominoes Fall?

Students explore the relationship between speed, distance and time by studying how how distance impacts the speed at which dominoes fall.

HS Life Science NYSSLS

The LE teachers at Indian River CSD recently created a document that separates out each HS Life Science standard with the associated CCC, DCI, and SEP. We hope that this document will be helpful in focusing the individual standards.

NYSSLS HS Life Science

3D Unit Planning - Where to start?

One of the most often questions we get asked during professional development workshops... "How do I get started?" Collaboratively, we've probably tried out a dozen different lesson and unit planning templates, but they all tried to fit a new type of instruction into a pre-existing planning framework. The NYSSLS "standards" begin at the level of the Performance Expectations; figuring out how to bring these alive in the classroom is not all that simple.

Thanks to some great elementary colleagues, I was introduced to the Frayer Model for vocabulary acquisition. This immediately sparked an idea, and with a few adjustments I think we finally have a useful tool for getting started with planning out how to tackle a Performance Expectation.

Help us pilot this planning tool! Let us know if you try it out, and share your thoughts about whether or not it was useful.

Make a copy of the original file so you can print (11x17) or edit.

Is DNA in our Food?

This slide show takes you through a 3D lesson where students plan an investigation to determine if food is a living thing.

3-D Experimental Design Templates MS & HS Levels

The following templates have been created to help guide your students as they delve into the world of 3-D investigations. Page 1 of each template is the exploration space. It is designed to be a brainstorming area as they work individually to record ideas about how they might proceed with their investigation. Page 2 is the actual experimental design page that their group agrees upon. Page 3 is intentionally left blank to allow students to build their own data tables and charts. Page 4 is a "report out" page in Claim, Evidence, Reasoning format. The last slides show a rubric I created using the performance expectations for the SEP: Planning and Carrying Out Investigations.

Reflection: My students are finding this template very easy to work with and appreciate the ability to have all their work in one place. 
- Cookie Barker

How does cell structure and function impact an organism?

This post includes resources/ materials that comprise the cell organelle structure/ function part of the cell biology unit. This slide show covers two weeks of class lessons with an emphasis on differentiated instruction. It is very much a "work in progress"- some aspects are very 3D in their instructional style, and others have a ways to go.