Standards, Standards Everywhere

As the new semester begins it's easy to get a sense of being completely overwhelmed by the onslaught of "standards" that prospective teachers are expected to have mastered by the time they graduate and start looking for their first job.

As I prepare for my Elementary Math, Science and Engineering course there are three sets of standards that I have to address; the recently adopted InTASC standards for teachers in the State of Vermont, the Common Core standards for math content and practices, and the newly released Next Generation standards for science and engineering.

The InTASC Model Core Teaching Standards also include the Learning Progressions which further break the Core Teaching Standards down to form a sort of rubric that can be used to determine a student teacher's level of competence. There are 10 Standards each of which addresses a separate aspect of becoming a teacher. Each Standard is then divided into Performance, Essential Knowledge and Critical Disposition Standards that are then further divided into specific pieces of human endeavor giving roughly 200 discrete bits of activity. Each of the Core Teaching Standards is also divided into around 60 separate items in the Progressions section giving about 600 more descriptions of bits of activity.

The Common Core math Standards for Math content and practices includes, on average, 30 content standards for each grade level K - 6. There are also 8 math practice standards which are developmentally appropriately identified in each grade level giving a grand total of around 375 discrete standards.

The Next Generation Science Standards contain between 3 and 5 Standards for each grade level K - 5. Each Standard is then further divided into Science and Engineering Practices, Disciplinary Core Ideas and Crosscutting Concepts for a rough total of  around 200 discrete, but relatively broad  standards. 


 

Engineering on a shoestring

 In my last entry I described the joy of using the Lego Wedo and Mindstorms sets to teach elementary school engineering skills as defined in the Next Generation Science and Engineering Standards .

 

However, you don't need to go to the expense of purchasing the Lego kits to teach perfectly good elementary school engineering skills.

 By way of introducing the concept of engineering in the elementary school we first distinguished it from science. This can be most easily done by looking at the origin of the questions or curiosities one might have when studying a situation.

 In science the questions or inquiry arise from the natural world;  how are rocks forms, what causes the seasons, what affects the time of a pendulum swing, how is  paper made?

 In engineering the questions or inquiry arise from how we use our scientific knowledge and understanding to solve problems, resolve issues or make life better.

 This implies that the study of science comes first. We can then use our new-found knowledge and understanding and make it more relevant and meaningful by applying it to an engineering situation.

 During GED695 we studied the science of a swinging pendulum and then used this knowledge to design a pendulum that swung once every second. Since all good engineering solutions need to be presented each group of students timed their pendulum to see who had made the most accurate one.

 

The prize went to Theresa and Monique; their pendulum swung precisely 30 times in 30 seconds exactly. 

 We also used a copy of the Sunday Free Press (free the following Monday) to construct the tallest towers we could that supported a small washer.

 Trisha,

 Kate,

Ashley and Julie built an incredibly elegant one from floor to ceiling.

 Everyone, however, was successful in building a tower and realizing a great sense of achievement.

The capital outlay for these two engineering classes? $0