Understanding the Next Generation Science Standards and using NGSS to create engaging and effective science lessons can be a challenge. However, by mentally replacing the NGSS with the 5E model offers a solid and structured approach to teaching that promotes inquiry and discovery the new standards call for. In this blog post, I’ll show you how I use both NGSS and the 5E model to design engaging and effective Earth Science lessons.

Understanding NGSS and the 5E Model

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

The NGSS three-dimensional learning includes:

1. Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs): Key concepts students should understand in each science discipline.

2. Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs): Skills students should develop to engage in scientific inquiry and engineering design.

3. Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs): Concepts that help students connect knowledge across different scientific disciplines.

The 5E Instructional Model

The 5E model is a five-part teaching framework:

1. Engage: Capture students' interest and stimulate their curiosity.

2. Explore: Provide hands-on experiences to form understanding.

3. Explain: Allow students to show understanding and provide clarification.

4. Elaborate: Deepen students’ learning through application.

5. Evaluate: Assess students’ understanding and skills.

Engaging with Phenomena

Engage: NGSS emphasizes the use of phenomena—observable events that can be explained scientifically—to spark curiosity and drive learning of concepts and skills through inquiry. The Engage phase of the 5E model captivates students’ interest and activates their prior knowledge.

By presenting a fun phenomenon, such as the year without a summer, you can immediately draw students into the lesson on lesser-known effects of volcanism, setting the stage for the initial exploration.

Hands-On Exploration

Explore: In this phase, teachers can design hands-on activities that explore key concepts or experiments that help explain the phenomenon. This phase aligns with NGSS’s focus on Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs), such as asking questions, developing models, and analyzing data. Ideally, you plan a lesson that challenges students to use online resources and simple materials you provide them with to design and build their own model or create their own experiment (and understanding) that shows the process, rather than giving them a set of directions to follow.

Activities such as creating a simulation of volcanic ash and gas spread using confetti and a fan allow students to actively engage in the scientific process and model the work of professional scientists.

Constructing Explanations

Explain: Here, students can use their models or experiments to show their understanding of the phenomenon and its key concepts. You may need to provide some instruction (direct, small group, individual) to clarify and expand on the more complex concepts. This phase connects the hands-on experiences from the Explore phase with the Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs) outlined in NGSS. By constructing explanations for the investigated phenomenon, students develop a deeper conceptual understanding and refine their scientific thinking.

For example, you can ask student groups to record a video of their confetti explosion and spread and explain how it relates to an explosion of a volcano such as Tambora aka the year without a summer culprit.

Extending Learning

Elaborate: Challenge your students to apply the concepts they learned to new situations or to explain other, related processes. This leads to a deeper and more flexible understanding of the concepts. This phase supports NGSS’s emphasis on Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs) by encouraging students to recognize patterns and make connections across different scientific disciplines.

For instance, after studying how the particles ejected from Mount Tambora spread and led to a year without a summer, students might explore how ocean circulation and the Earth’s rotation affect global wind patterns..

Assessing Understanding

Evaluate: The Evaluate phase is designed for students to demonstrate their learning through assessments that can seamlessly be aligned with NGSS’s three-dimensional framework (DCIs, SEPs, and CCCs). Performance assessments, as NGSS calls them, might include investigative projects, multimedia presentations, or other reflections that help teachers gauge factual knowledge and application of scientific concepts and scientific and science and engineering skills.

For example, students could create a museum exhibit that contains: (1) a model that thoroughly explains the types of volcanic eruptions that lead to ejection of large amounts of gas and particulates, (2) a statistical analysis of how the explosion of Tambora compares to average eruptions of this kind, and (3) a computer simulation of the mechanism of how the volcanic smog from Tambora spread and led to the year without a summer showing the influence of ocean circulation and global wind patterns on this process.

5E Model and NGSS Just Fit

The 5E model’s emphasis on inquiry, hands-on learning, and real-world application makes it ideal for implementing NGSS. By starting with phenomena, the 5E model can be used to engage students in authentic scientific exploration, helping them build a deeper understanding of science concepts and practices. This approach not only aligns with the goals of NGSS by preparing students to think and act like scientists and equipping them with the skills and knowledge needed for them to become informed citizens, difference makers, and problem solvers of the future.

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