Unpacking the NGSS: Phenomena and Storylines [Episode 179]

Rebecca Joyner [00:00:01]:
So far in our series unpacking the next generation science standards, we have talked about what the NGSS are, what I love and don’t necessarily love about the NGSS, why you don’t need to be scared of using the NGSS though in the three d nature that is critical to it. I really feel like it’s the core of it. And really last week’s episode, we took a more concentrated look into the SEPs and CCCs, how to teach them, but really also how to assess them. Cause that’s a lot of the questions that I’ve been seeing in my inbox. And two other key characteristics of the NGSS, in addition to its three-dimensional nature that I wanna address are the concepts of teaching phenomena and using storylines. So that’s what we are going to unpack today. Are you ready for it? Let’s dive in. This is Secondary Science Simplified, a podcast for secondary science teachers who want to engage their students and simplify their lives.

Rebecca Joyner [00:00:59]:
I’m Rebecca Joyner from It’s Not Rocket Science. As a high school science teacher turned curriculum writer, I am passionate about helping other science teachers love their jobs, serve their students, and do it all in only forty hours a week. Are you ready to rock the time you spend in your classroom and actually have a life outside of it? You are in the right place, teacher friend. Let’s get to today’s episode. So like I’ve said in every episode in this series, like NGSS is a registered trademark of Achieve. They did not sponsor this, endorse it, anything like that. I’ve just gone rogue and I’m sharing my opinions on it here. So as always, take everything that I say with a grain of salt.

Rebecca Joyner [00:01:45]:
It’s just my opinion. Use what serves you and leave what doesn’t. But here’s what we’re gonna do. Here’s what this is gonna look like. I’m gonna start off by just telling you really what phenomena are. Then we’ll talk about how that releases storylines, why I love them, and how to get started using them. So let’s dive in with, you know, what even they are. And I’m gonna take this quote or this definition, I should say, directly from nextgenscience.org that defines phenomena as observable events that occur in the universe that we can use our science knowledge to explain or predict.

Rebecca Joyner [00:02:22]:
So phenomena are not explanations of scientific information or, you know, the right terminology to be used behind what is happening, but instead are what can be experienced or observed and documented by our students in order for them to have context and meaning for what they are learning. I think those are the two really keywords here. We want students to have context and meaning. For decades, we’ve been saying that students need real world application, real world examples. That’s really the baseline for what phenomena are. We’re really just trying to hit that same goal of like, let’s have context and meaning to what they’re learning so that they actually care about it. And according to the NGSS, phenomena often fall into one of three categories. So they can be anchoring, investigative, or everyday.

Rebecca Joyner [00:03:16]:
So an anchoring phenomenon will provide a focus for the entire unit. Typically, this is something where you’re gonna say it and then you’re gonna come back to it over and over again throughout the entire unit. So for example, an anchoring phenomenon for your cells unit and your biology class could be the fact that like we can’t cure cancer. Like why have we not cured cancer yet? And that can be something that you refer back to over and over again when you’re talking just about organelles, when you’re talking about cell theory, when you get into cell transport, and then of course, when you get into the cell cycle, you’re talking about mitosis and the regulation of it or lack thereof that leads to uncontrolled cell growth. So that can be an anchoring phenomenon. Investigative phenomenon are used kind of along the way of the learning process. They provide focus and meaningful context for an instructional lesson or maybe a sequence of lessons. So this is gonna be something where you’re gonna kind of in again, you’re gonna investigate it.

Rebecca Joyner [00:04:14]:
You’re gonna be doing some research on it. You might be doing a little lab on it. This could be if you do an inquiry investigation like I have in my biology curriculum where they’re looking into feedback loops and the maintenance of homeostasis. They’re gonna design this inquiry investigation to do that. And then that’s gonna be something that’s gonna kind of guide and focus and provide meaning throughout our time learning about how homeostasis is maintained and as that idea is really introduced to them. And then everyday phenomenon is really relating and anchoring our investigative phenomenon to a personal experience that they may have. So these are gonna come up a lot. Everyday phenomenon, like, are the things that are just gonna come up in conversation that they’re they’re just gonna get, like, that they see, that they experience.

Rebecca Joyner [00:04:58]:
These to me are, like, the easiest and the things you’re probably already doing without thinking about it. Now, how do phenomena relate to story lines? A storyline according to the NGSS is a sequence of lessons where every step of that sequence is driven by our students’ questions that come up as they are interacting with a phenomenon. So maybe you have this anchoring phenomenon of, like we said, of, you know, why can’t we cure cancer? And this is gonna kind of anchor our entire cells unit. And the storyline would be taking that concept and using in every single lesson, we’re going to be bringing it back. That’s going to be where their questions are coming from as we’re learning about these organelles, as we’re learning about mitosis so that they can really see how every single thing we’re learning goes back to helping us figure out the answer to this question that we’re investigating throughout this entire unit. Another example of this could be, you know, why don’t antibiotics work how they used to? You know, why are they not as effective? And so that can guide your entire evolution unit. That can be the story that you follow, the line of story that you follow, if you will, throughout your evolution unit as you walk through, you know, what is evolution? What are the principles of natural selection? What are patterns we see in it? You know, why does this even occur? It’s a pretty interesting question for them to answer and it’s something that they again, that’s an everyday thing too. They’re gonna experience in their everyday lives if they get prescribed an antibiotic and it doesn’t work because they’ve come resistant to it because of overuse or inappropriate use or whatever it may be.

Rebecca Joyner [00:06:31]:
So those are kind of some ways that those ideas of phenomenon and storylines tie together. So I’m gonna kinda talk about them as we go forth kind of together just because phenomena are used in storylines, just kinda as we move forward. So first off, like, why do I love these things in general? Why do I think these are great concepts, great pillars of the NGSS? Simply put is that this is what engages students like phenomena engage students. Ninety nine point nine percent of the questions that they just like throw out off the wall tend to go back to some sort of phenomenon that they’ve observed, something they’ve seen, something they’ve experienced that they just don’t understand in life. And so this is an opportunity for us as teachers to use their questions, to guide how we teach, not to go off topic, but to really be central to what we’re doing. And this is how learning has historically happened. Like this is what we I’ve said from the beginning of this NGSS series, this is the true nature of science. It’s making observations, it’s asking questions and then investigating those questions, you know, finding data or information, seeking answers or conclusions or solutions for problems.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:42]:
Like this is what science is to its core. And the problem is is that because of, you know, a lot of the standardization around science and the testing we have to do and the metrics we have to meet and, like, the constraints, like it’s forced us to not be able to do science, how it was intended to be done and how so many of us like want to teach our students. And so that’s where, like I even said from the first episode, I hold the NGSS in such tension because while I love and respect the desire to get us back to like what science is all about at the same time, like to its core, it’s standards, it’s a standardization and the standardization of learning and teaching and educating students is what has kind of made it so we don’t get this ideal world because we have all these other constraints we have to work within. So it’s very tricky. It’s not like a black and white situation at all. But I think we can all agree that like all of us want our students to be able to apply what they’re learning to real world context. Like, that’s what we want and that is what phenomena equip us and help us to do. They help students to see the meaning behind the content and skills.

Rebecca Joyner [00:08:49]:
They help make it matter. We want students to be able to answer the question and really never ask the question, why are we learning this? We want them to know the answer to that right away because of the phenomena or the storylines that we’re using to engage them in what we’re doing. Because remember, that is at its core what the NGSS is about. It’s a shift from knowing to doing or learning about to figuring out how or why. Okay. So for example, this is why I’m like so passionate about teaching food chains and food webs and trophic pyramids alongside teaching photosynthesis and cellular respiration. I feel like traditionally, because of the way textbooks sequence the content, we have like a biochemistry unit and they’re learning macromolecules and they’re learning these biochemical reactions. They’re learning about enzymes.

Rebecca Joyner [00:09:38]:
And it’s, it’s just like so much with like no context or meaning for them. Like they do not care. But one thing I’ve loved doing since I started being able to teach things in the sequence I want and writing my own curriculum is this larger energy flow unit. That’s like, we’re gonna look at this at a macro level first. Like we’re gonna talk about ecosystems and how in like food chains and what we see and how that energy flows and the 10% rule. And you’re gonna have this context that makes so much sense because you can see it with your eyeballs and you can experience it in everyday life. Then we’re gonna get down into the micro level and see like what’s happening there with photosynthesis and cellular respiration and, you know, the flow of energy in, in within those two processes that then contribute to the greater flow of energy. And then we’re gonna tie in, you know, the, the carbon and the hydrogen or excuse me, water with hydrogen and oxygen and the nitrogen cycles and circle back to that when we get to ecology, like, I love teaching energy flow, macro and micro at the same time.

Rebecca Joyner [00:10:39]:
I just think it’s so helpful because I think it’s doing exactly this. It’s helping them see from the start why we need to learn this. And so that that’s really what the hope is with these phenomena or with these storylines. Now, I think the reason that we can kind of get our guard up around using them and introducing them is because I feel like there’s a misconception around teachers. And again, I could be interpreting this totally wrong. This is all just my opinion. NGSS did not sponsor this. But I think we feel like we have to throw out every instructional resource we have and revamp our units and rewrite them entirely around a storyline or a specific phenomenon.

Rebecca Joyner [00:11:19]:
And I do not believe that is the case. Like, can you do that? And it’d be very successful. Absolutely. Like, I think that is a very successful strategy. I think people can do that. I think that’s great. If that’s what you want to do, like go off, like do what you need to do. But do you have to do that in order to use phenomena to engage your students or in order to incorporate storylines? Absolutely not.

Rebecca Joyner [00:11:44]:
I personally do not structure my units around specific phenomenon or storylines on purpose. I do that intentionally. Instead, I have for every unit that I teach or I’ve written curriculum for, I just have like a list of things that could be used that are relevant phenomena that could be developed into story lines for that unit. If you use any of my ASMR arc and science units, that’s in the NGSS alignment guide. It’s a PDF, it’s in the implementation folder for every unit I have. They’re specific to each unit. You can check out my list there. Okay.

Rebecca Joyner [00:12:20]:
I’ve shared that with you. If you use ASR rocket science units. And the reason I do this is because I found that using phenomena that engage my students, it’s gonna be the most effective when the students have a role, even a small one in the phenomena selection process. Because when the phenomena we’re using are both relevant and meaningful to them, we will find that they’re so much more engaged in learning about it. And like that’s the whole point, right? NGSS even says it themselves that the most powerful phenomena from an educational perspective are culturally or personally relevant or consequential to students. So this could be as, you know, drastic as giving them the list of ideas of like, Hey, what do you want us to investigate? Or what do you, what are, which of these concepts do you find most interesting to anchor our next unit? And we’re gonna talk about it the rest of the unit. Like you can show them that or just from getting to know your students and listening to the questions that they’re asking, that can be what you then pull in and say, okay, we’re gonna use this to anchor a unit. Or that question you asked, that’s an everyday phenomenon you’re experiencing.

Rebecca Joyner [00:13:27]:
We’re gonna bring that in now for this next few lessons we’re gonna do. We’re gonna talk about that and get those answers you’re looking for. Honestly, y’all, my best ideas for phenomena or storylines have come from the questions that my students ask year after year. If you are not keeping a running list on your phone of questions students ask, stop what you’re doing right now and start doing that. I always had one for like every prep I taught and someone would ask a good question or someone would ask something that felt very off the wall. I, if it still was like, Oh, that could like be interesting to investigate with you, but we just don’t have time. I keep it on my phone. And I started doing this.

Rebecca Joyner [00:14:06]:
Not because I was thinking that far ahead with phenomena, but because I was like, Oh, I want to come back to these if we have time later. Cause I was always on a time crunch with the EOC and getting through the content, But I wanted to come back to some of those things. They were really interesting things. Or if we had a few minutes within the class, it can be something that like we get together and they help me find the answers and we look into it together. But then having that running list is what was like the baseline for starting all of my lists of phenomena that are in those NGSS alignment guides. So I feel like that’s a really simple way to gather ideas. Yes, you can use Google. Yes, you can get into NGSS teacher Facebook groups.

Rebecca Joyner [00:14:42]:
But at the end of the day, like at a minimum, it needs to interest you so that you’re at least excited to talk through this phenomenon with them. But preferably at a maximum, it’s going to be their ideas. It’s going to be what they’re bringing to the table. And that’s what you’re going to use to guide your instruction. Okay. So let’s get really practical here, how to get started using them. And then I’ll share some examples from my NGSS alignment guides, just to give you some ideas. I always want to make your job easier and not harder.

Rebecca Joyner [00:15:10]:
So I think the best thing to do is start small and simple. And I think the easiest phenomena to start incorporating are investigative phenomena because most likely every unit you have has some sort of lab activity or full on lab investigation that you can take and you can run with like pretty much every lab is innately designed around students investigating an observable event, which remember that’s like the definition of a phenomenon to its core. And so you can use that to provide focus and meaningful content for your students. Like take that and run with it, expand it, create discussions out of it, create extension research projects out of it. Like take that and use that as a starting point for this. And then from there, I think once you feel more comfortable, you can start brainstorming maybe some ideas for anchoring phenomenon for a unit. I like to think of them as themes that really, again, anchor the entire unit, things that I’m going to bring up at the start and we’re going to come back to several times and for sure at the end of the unit. For example, when teaching heredity and biology, anything related to identical twins, like, is such a great phenomenon because they have so many questions about it and they don’t really understand how it works.

Rebecca Joyner [00:16:21]:
So whether you’re talking about Punnett squares and basic inheritance patterns or polygenic inheritance and mutations or getting into epigenetics and really diving into meiosis and the reproductive process, like all of that can be tied back into this original phenomena of, like, the existence of identical twins. And in particular, identical twins that aren’t exactly identical. I have a link to a picture of some twins that I keep in my NGSS alignment guide for heredity that I love to pull up because I think it, it really engaged them. Like they can’t possibly be twins. They don’t look alike. And it’s something you can really talk about. So don’t throw out your lesson plans, you know, because a student has a great question and now you’re like, Oh, we need to rewrite or reorient the entire unit around this. Use their question, say, hey, this will be an anchoring phenomenon for the rest of the unit.

Rebecca Joyner [00:17:12]:
Everything can tie back into it and then write it down and save it for future years if it’s something those students are interested in too. Now, I’ve said a lot here, I’m using students questions. They’re asking questions and that’s inspiring this. So you might be thinking like, how do I get students to ask good questions? I might be showing them a phenomenon and they just don’t care. And so first thing I’ll say is like, you can only do so much. There are gonna be some things that they don’t care about and you’re just we’re just doing our best here. Okay? The second thing I’ll say is like asking good questions. I think they learn a lot from modeling it.

Rebecca Joyner [00:17:46]:
Like you asking good questions about what they’re learning about science, but also just about their lives. Starting that dialogue, that is a core part of the culture of my classroom is we’re in a constant dialogue. So that’s something you need to model, you need to practice and you have to do over and over again. The other thing I wanna encourage you with too on this is asking questions is an SEP. It is a science and engineering practice of the NGSS. What that means is it’s a key skill that we are supposed to be fostering in them. And that means it’s hard. Like, it’s not any easier than planning and carrying out investigations or analyzing and interpreting data, which are also SEPs.

Rebecca Joyner [00:18:27]:
So have grace with them and have grace with yourself. I think sometimes we get so frustrated that they’re not good at asking questions, but I don’t think many of them are innately good at planning and carrying out investigations either. So we gotta support them in this and be there with them in this and encourage them in this. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we stop doing it. We keep doing it. We keep pressing into that. Okay. So before I let you go, I want to give you a couple examples of phenomena because I know sometimes you’re like, I just need some ideas because I don’t even know where to get started.

Rebecca Joyner [00:18:57]:
So I’m going to give you some content specific examples to end our time together. First, some biology examples. So an everyday phenomenon here, I already mentioned cancer for cells unit, but this is a very interesting statistic from cancer.gov. By 02/1930, it is estimated that worldwide cases of cancer are expected to increase by fifty percent. So not only can we not figure out how to cure it, but it’s increasing. That is an everyday phenomenon that can also be an anchoring phenomenon that guides your entire unit. Another one for genetics, you know, every day around us, we see a vast array of living things and they’re also different. You know, you’re a human, you may have eaten a banana this morning.

Rebecca Joyner [00:19:38]:
That was once part of a living thing. You know, you might have a puppy in your house. There might be a bacterium that’s making you very ill right now, but all of these very different living things have the same instruction manual. There’s four letters, A, T, C, G. So how is it possible that only four different letters make up so much broad diversity of all organisms that exist? That’s crazy. That’s something they can that can anchor the entire unit. Another thing, I love my ecosystem in a bottle investigation. It’s one of my, like, favorite resources I do in biology ever.

Rebecca Joyner [00:20:13]:
It’s in my oncology unit. It’s an excellent month long investigation. And you can use that, like this idea that Earth is a closed system, meaning matter and energy have to cycle through living and non living things since it’s closed. So how does that happen? And they get to see it on like a micro scale by making these terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and having them connect. It’s so fun. So those are a few ideas there for biology. For anatomy, there’s so many because everything is so relevant to them. For your support and motion unit, learning about the muscular and skeletal systems, you could talk about the effect of zero gravity on astronauts and like what that does to their bodies.

Rebecca Joyner [00:20:50]:
For absorption and excretion or really any unit, digestive system, whatever, you can talk about the wellness industry. Between 2013 and 2015 alone, there were $3,720,000,000,000 spent in this industry. I should have grabbed an up more up to date statistic before I shared this, but like that’s an insane amount of money. So like, are these fads, these things that people are investing in, are they actually helpful to the body? They can research so many different things that they’re seeing online. I, like, love a product where it’s like, okay, you saw a reel or a TikTok about something that’s gonna make you better, like a cold plunge. Alright. Let’s research the science behind it to see if that actually backs it up. Again, I mentioned that antibiotic resistance lab for guiding your evolution unit or that concept I have that the lab that I use in my evolution unit, I also bring up in anatomy because it can be used in your protection unit when you’re learning about the immune system and how the body fights and like bring that up as an investigation that they use to look at a real world situation.

Rebecca Joyner [00:21:51]:
For physical science, I mean, physics is also like lends itself to so many real world examples. Talking about roller coasters when you’re learning about motion and force and energy, talk about how in your electricity unit, how sometimes maybe, you know, you and your sibling are both blow drying your hair at the same time and the power goes out or the microwave, your mom’s using the microwave and the dishwasher in the oven at dinner and all the lights go off. Like, why does this happen? It’s a circuit conversation and you can really bring in so many cool things with outer space and earth and space science into your physical science unit as well. There’s so much overlap there. For chemistry, one of my favorite things to talk with students about in my introduction to chemistry unit, where I’m introducing a lot of things like dimensional analysis and scientific notation and like skills that are going to come up a lot that I want them to see the relevance of. Like, how does Chick fil A know how many nuggets they need to make in a day? You know, or how does any fast food restaurant, how are they able to mass produce foods like using a recipe? It’s just like such a great example of dimensional analysis in the real world, the necessity of scaling measurements. And that brings in that, that cross cutting concept of, you know, scale proportion and quantity. I love, love, love that phenomenon to investigate.

Rebecca Joyner [00:23:08]:
That’s an everyday thing. And your electrons unit, when you’re talking about anchoring phenomena that could anchor the whole unit, could be the chemistry of fireworks. And then that can even carry you when you get into your chemical reactions unit, talking about fireworks again there. And another one I love too is in states of matter. I have a big investigation in my states of matter chemistry unit, where they are making their own airbags and they’re using gas stoichiometry to do it. But the entire investigation of airbags and their effectiveness and how they work. And then again, that brings in physics and, you know, law of conservation of momentum. So you’re getting some cross cutting themes there.

Rebecca Joyner [00:23:44]:
Like these phenomena bring in so many ideas. And I really think if you just spend like ten minutes thinking of some ideas, y’all will come up with so much stuff. So that is my challenge for you today. I’ve given you some ideas, but my take home challenge is as soon as this episode ends, as long as you’re not driving, or maybe you can be driving, you just voice annotate this or dictate this, set a timer for ten minutes for one of your preps. So say chemistry and just do a brain dump of all the ideas that could serve as phenomena or storylines for that class. These can be based on questions student have asked, real world applications you’re already using, labs you’re already doing that you just want to kind of like expand and focus on a little bit more. And then when the timer goes off, maybe you spend another five minutes labeling like, okay, this could go into my Adam unit. This could go into my chemical bonds unit or whatever, and then pick one for the next unit you have and try it and try just starting with using it as an anchor in a dialogue that you’re gonna be bringing up throughout the unit.

Rebecca Joyner [00:24:46]:
I feel like that’s such an approachable starting point without feeling like you have to rewrite an entire unit around a storyline. So I hope this episode encouraged you. If you’re like, I need to hear from someone else because I’m sick of your thoughts about the NGSS stay tuned. That is our last episode in this series is a guest episode from another teacher using the NGSS. Because I want you to hear other voices on this. So I’m excited to get that to you. And if you want to, you know, hear more about any of those resources I mentioned, or, yeah, just any more support on this topic, check out the show notes. You can find those at it’s anoraclescienceclassroom.com/episode170nine.

Rebecca Joyner [00:25:22]:
And if you haven’t left a review yet for the podcast, I’d love it if you did it today, especially if after listening to this episode, you feel a little less intimidated about using phenomenon and storylines in your NGSS classroom. Alright, teacher friends, that wraps up today’s episode. If you’re looking for an easy way to start simplifying your life as a secondary science teacher, head to itsnotrocketscienceclassroom.com/challenge to grab your classroom reset challenge. And guess what? It’s totally free. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I’ll see you here next week. Until then, I’ll be rooting for you, teacher friend.